After reading Krakauer’s Into the Wild and Henry David Thoreau’s exerts from Walden, we can see a deep connection between Christopher McCandless and Thoreau’s transcendental beliefs. Both Chris McCandless and Thoreau show transcendentalism in their actions of self-wisdom, differences, and liberation. Chris McCandless life choices in Into the wild reflect the transcendental beliefs of Thoreau’s Walden. The first transcendental belief of McCandless is that he marches to the beat of a different drummer.
Chris McCandless and Thoreau had a lot in common. Both men had the same intelligent and wise thought and actions. Transcendentalism means to assert the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that empirical. Its scientific reality and is knowable through intuition: (quote- Webster’s Dictionary Online). We all can see that Chris and Thoreau share the same beliefs of individualism, self-wisdom, and self- confidence.
Henry David Thoreau and Chris McCandless embrace beliefs from the Transcendental philosophy. In the book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer and the excerpts from Walden by Henry David Thoreau readers can see connections between the beliefs of McCandless and Thoreau. They show that McCandless and Thoreau share the Transcendental beliefs of being one with nature, having self-wisdom, and simplicity. Parallels exist between the Transcendental beliefs of Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau.
Transcendental Connections between Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Chris McCandless in John Krakauer’s Into the Wild Henry David Thoreau, Jon Krakauer, and Chris McCandless are all strong believers in Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is a 19th century philosophy that values self-wisdom, individualism, and non-conformity. Both Thoreau and McCandless embrace these ideas greatly. Chris’s actions in Into the Wild show that the transcendental beliefs of Thoreau were important to him.
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”- Henry David Thoreau. Transcendentalism is an American philosophy that revolves around self-reliance and independence, commonly in nature, a Transcendentalist wants to find the true meaning in life. I believe that Chris McCandless was a Transcendentalist because he was able to leave his whole life behind and take on a minimalist lifestyle while having a strong relationship with god. However, I believe that I am not a Transcendentalist, but simply an adventurer.
Thoreau and Emerson wrote the short stories Civil Disobedience and Nature and both if these show big transcendentalism ideas. The story Civil Disobedience mainly focuses on how the author does not think he should pay taxes for things he doesn’t support. We see Thoreau talk about how people should be allowed to refuse the government and that they should govern less. Thoreau also says that people should not support unjust laws and work harder towards ending something they don’t agree with. The short story Nature is about how being in nature affects you and makes you a better person.
Thoreau was a prominent and influential transcendentalist which meant that he believed modern society’s institutions, organizations, religions, and politics are all corrupt. He believes that people should go back to their roots in nature and be more simple-minded like our ancient ancestors who lived in nature. To think about it in more modern terms, he was practically a minimalist who believed people should only live with things essential for life, basic life necessities like food, water, and shelter. He quotes, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Thoreau 66). From the quote, we can tell that he believes that a life without living with nature and essentials only is a life wasted.
Thoreau was best known for his philosophical work- Walden. As far as his philosophies went, Thoreau was an avid transcendentalist, meaning he generally believed in a natural altruism within the individual, making the church and state mostly unneeded. These beliefs lead him to vocalize his opinions about unrest in the government. He believed the people should strive to overtake an unjust governmental body, so much so that he was sometimes considered an anarchist, though this doesn't seem to be the case. Thoreau believed in a simple manner of living and encouraged reflection upon oneself and upon nature, which he also wrote about in a rather romanticized style (he was also a poet and author).
Henry David Thoreau, one of America's most famous transcendentalist writers, undertook a journey in 1845 that his fellow Americans and other people around the world can only dream of: he escaped the eternal "rat race" of daily life. Thoreau abandoned his traditional lifestyle to pursue a living experiment in which he isolated himself in the woods for two years, two months, and two days. He built a small cabin a mile away from civilization, lived off of the land, and for the most part, relied solely on himself for survival. This was not done out of hatred towards society, but rather a personal desire to seek greater self-reliance and freedom by living a deliberate life. Thoreau sought to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life."
Transcendentalism Transcendentalism is a philosophy by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau which focuses on human rights and society’s negative impact on individuals. Transcendental beliefs are still found today in the modern world, whether people are aware of it or not. When reviewing any song or current movie, it is hard not to find these messages within them. Local musician Conor Oberst often sings about his dissatisfactions with society, which reflect many transcendental ideas. In fact, in 2008 Oberst even performed at rallies for our current president Barack Obama.
From this Thoreau’s thoughts from Nature still lean towards that of Emerson’s definition of
Thoreau learned to love nature and realized how good it was to love it. While in the woods he became to love nature and his bean rows, they attached Thoreau closer to earth. He says “I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth and so I got strength like Antaeus” (Thoreau 238). The dedication he had to have for those beans had to be a lot.
Consequently, what Thoreau proposed was simplicity rejecting modern civilization to return to nature and let the individual to develop his/her highest possibilities. Thoreau not only made a critique of the modern society as Emerson did, but also he practiced his ideology: he experienced that life is better without crowd, luxuries and complexity. The transcendentalist poet spent two year close to nature. He lived at Walden Pond where he wrote entire journals recounting his experience. Thoreau is well known for his book “Walden” (1854).
Henry David Thoreau is one of the primary promoters of the transcendentalist movement and has been inspiring people to take on the transcendentalist lifestyle ever since the mid 1800’s. Mccandless was an admirer of Henry’s philosophy but he wasn’t as fully immersed in his work and ideals as Thoreau was to his own. His intentions were not as closely aligned to the movement as Thoreau’s and the difference between these icons are clearly visible. Self reliance is one of the most significant components of the transcendentalism movement that Henry David Thoreau contributed to in his literary career. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” - (taken from Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”).
In his essay Walden, Thoreau affirms the Transcendentalist belief of living simply by emphasizing the thought of living with only the essentials and the importance of self reliance. Thoreau supports the ideal of living simply through the emphasis of only living with what one needs. Simplicity exists
