In heading west mcCandless feels free of a world he describes as

a "stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess".

Explanation:

"Into The Wild", by Jon Krakueur, tells the story of a twenty year old man named Christopher McCandless. He had just graduated from college where he studied Law. Instead of pursuing and advancing his career in Law, McCandless chooses a path which is somewhat strange. He begins his journey taking the western route and later moving north to Alaska.

He undertakes this journey because he believed that the present world which he lived in and was trying to escape from was 'stifling and reeked of material excesses'. The kind of life he now chooses to live is best described as an Ascetic life only that in his case, he does not go the spiritual route. As he begins his journey, he takes along with him books about edible wild plants and thriving in a lifestyle such as he has chosen.