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Thoreau as a transcendental philosopher explain
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His vision of what transcends the ordinary experience is an important theme in American philosophical and literary traditions; two are the figures who paid great attention to the quest for transcendence: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Jack Kerouac. For Anderson, these two great figure are the prototypical American “grievous angels”. In what sense are Emerson and Kerouac grievous angels? First, the author explains that “they call us out and have us seek our own self-transcendence”, then “it fits Kerouac best in considering its import of “bringing trouble” or being “sorrowful”. Emerson’s character is perhaps better captured by the sense of being “excessively strong”.
McCandless has often been compared to Henry David Thoreau and without doubt McCandless was influenced by the transcendentalist movement but to compare these two people would be an insult to Thoreau and his philosophy. It is true that he displayed civil disobedience hitchhiking when it is not allowed, hoping freights, and hunting in Stampede Trail without a license; Chris’s father also points out that “He refused instruction of any kind” (Krakauer, Wild 111). He interprets “civil disobedience” as a rejection of any kind of imposed law expressing extremely individualistic ideals freeing yourself from society and power, but Thoreau considers his responsibility to break the law if it overrun the rights of other human beings and is against his judgement of morals rather than following the will of the government and the majority blindly.
In the short story, “Death of an Innocent” by Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless travels into the Alaskan wilderness with the intention of relying completely on himself. In the true spirit of transcendentalism, McCandless travels to escape the bounds of society and to remove himself from a materialistic world. Many argue, however, that Chris McCandless was not a transcendentalist because he travels to exotic lands as a means of avoidance, but actually, Chris McCandless is the epitome of a transcendentalist. Transcendentalists, however, rely on themselves and nature to survive and do not depend on material items. Transcendentalists romanticize individualism and believe that intuition is the best guide through life.
"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.
Chris McCandless was a young man who had been a part of a wealthy family and previously lived a comfortable lifestyle, until he decided that he was better off without it. After graduating from Emory University, McCandless cut off all communication with his family and created a new identity for himself as a form of dissociation from society. Transcendentalism influenced Chris McCandless' life and beliefs in Into the Wild as it strongly evoked the sense of abandoning his privileged lifestyle and a simple life of nonconformity. Chris McCandless felt the need to abandon his social life after he retrieved influential beliefs from the ideologies of people like Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the excerpt ‘Walden’, Thoreau states how most
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a philosopher during the early 1800’s in America, wrote Self-Reliance, an essay about the importance of the individual, and relying one’s own thoughts and impressions. He emphasizes the importance of thinking for yourself, not relying on others to think for you. Rhetorical strategies, like figurative language, allusions, and elaborate syntax and parallelism, allow Emerson
In the 21st century, there are more ways of living ones life than ever before. From religious, economic, and moral standpoints, life can be lived altered to ones beliefs. Unfortunately, it is only recently that the normalization of living ones own life has came about. For a young man named Neil Perry, he has certain dreams for his life, but his father will do everything in his power to forbid them. In Peter Weirs “Dead Poets Society” the new English teacher, Mr. Keating bases his class around Transecendental ideals.
Was Chris McCandless a true transcendentalist? Transcendentalism is a system developed by Immanuel Kant, based on the idea that, in order to understand the nature of reality, one must first examine and analyze the reasoning process that governs the nature of experience. Influenced by romanticism, Platonism, and Kantian philosophy, it taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity, and its members held progressive views on feminism and communal living. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were central figures. In Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild, McCandless is viewed as a transcendentalist.
The Dead Poets Society portrays the views of transcendentalism seamlessly into movie through the characters Neil Perry, Todd Anderson, and Mr. Keating. These characters represent the ideals of transcendentalism by vicariously demonstrating the teachings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, who are all transcendentalists that practice self through nature and non-conformity. Throughout the movie, all three characters represent transcendentalism, but express the ideals in their own way. Neil Perry exhibits his true human self in the scene where he opens the window and strips down of his clothes before killing himself. Whitman, a poet who practices self through nature utters, “[He] will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked.”
Transcendentalism can be defined as, “a philosophy which says that thought and spiritual things are more real than ordinary human experience and material things”; accordingly, the behaviors of the character Neil Perry, from Dead Poets Society, connects in countless ways. Perhaps the biggest way Neil relates to the tenets of Transcendentalism is in the belief that, “major inspirations included nature and intuition”. For instance, Neil Perry is sent to a top-ranking educational institute by two hard-working parents that hope to give Neil the chance that neither of them had had as young adult. Thus, with Neil’s persistent and stubborn father dictating what his future career should be, Neil always assumed he would become a Physician. However, at this school, Neil is taught that he should not allow others to dictate his future; instead, he should live the life that he dreams of (Dead Poets Society).
The reader gets to join McCandless in his adventure across the country as he invents a new life for himself. He embraces the ideas and morals of Thoreau and Emerson in his journey. In the book, a man by the man by the name of Westerberg discusses about how McCandless is not destroying his possessions and journey around the wild because the wild he is suicidal or unintelligent. “You could tell right away that Alex was intelligent… He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.”
Transcendentalism: Dismembering Proactive Religion and Conformity Developed in America during the 19th Century, transcendentalism, widely referred to as a “belief in a higher reality than that found in sense experience or in a higher kind of knowledge than that achieved by human reason” (“Transcendentalism."). William Cullen Bryant, the first American poet of international reputation, used several elements of transcendentalism in his poetry. By allowing his poems to be original and not imitating similar ideas from different poets of his time, Bryant’s poetry remains spoken and recited by many Americans of present time. Bryant’s strong imagery of nature and its compatibility with American literature is the focus in all of his poems resembling
In his Novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne suggests that the likeness of his main character, Hester Prynne, holding her baby bears semblance to the ever famous image of the Divine Maternity, an image depicting the virgin Mary holding her divinely conceived child. The two images are severely juxtaposed as Hester Prynne has been convicted of committing Adultery (in the process, she conceived an illegitimate child) and is now atoning for her sin whereas The Virgin Mary is widely recognized as a pure being free of sin who was blessed with divine conception. This stark contrast serves its purpose as such, however it also further exemplifies Hester's physical beauty and could possibly foreshadow certain aspects of her personality. In addition,
Walt Whitman is one of the leading mystic poets of death in the field of American poetry. Death is assigned a distinguished space in his poetic universe of Leaves of Grasswhich immensely colours his vision of life. This paper is an attempt to present Whitman’s attitude towards death vis-à-vis global mystic perspective. Reality of Death
This quote refers to that the enlightenment fundamentally empathizes, that every individual has the responsibility, for thinking for themselves. This core idea is represented in the behavior of the environmentalists. Each one of them were not involuntarily pressed by a third party, to position themselves in the path of the bulldozer. However, each of them individually thought for themselves. All of them came to the conclusion, that the forest is worthy of salvaging.
