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Examples Of Marxism In Into The Wild

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In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild the main character Christopher Johnson McCandless describes what he is looking for on his Odyssey as “ultimate freedom”. What does it mean to achieve “ultimate freedom”? Well, to everyone it is different, however to Christopher, it is to be free from other people's rules. Throughout McCandless whole life he finds authority, particularly oppressive. To live completely alone, where the only laws he feels the need to follow are those of nature, is to him, “ultimate freedom”. In the book, Christopher McCandless rejected the American Dream and sought a more fulfilling experience in the wilderness that is Alaska. His demise from starvation was the result of underestimating the scale of civilization and the uncivilized …show more content…

Into the Wild viewed from a Marxist perspective is evident throughout the novel. McCandless wants to escape what he calls "arbitrary life" to travel and live in the wild. “No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.”(Krakauer 163) As he travels on his Odyssey, McCandless comes in contact with many people along the road. These individuals come from different classes, however, all want to help McCandless. Due to McCandless’s stubbornness, he refuses their help. In the perspective of a Marxist, this behavior is evident due to the fact he does not want to be part of any social class, and all the people he encounters are part of a capitalist society. Christopher believes that people in society are too comfortable and the way to live is to constantly seek adventure. “ The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” (Krakauer 56-57) The decision he made to go to Alaska with minimal supplies was in many ways a suicidal …show more content…

McCandless was for one dissatisfied with the way he was living in society. He would rather live as far away from our society then be surrounded with materialistic things and authority. “Put a match to it. One hundred and twenty-three dollars in the legal tender was promptly reduced to ash and smoke”( Krakauer 29) Evident in Christopher’s journal is the act of burning all his money and leaving his car. This was ultimately a way for McCandless to entirely be on his own without the use of anything modern or having possession of material, such as American currency and a vehicle. His detachment towards materialistic things is leading towards his idealistic ways of not wanting to be a part of social classes such as the perspective of a Marxist. A Marxist believes that social classes should not exist. Chris is ultimately “living off the essentials in life.” Chris did not need materialistic things to be happy. His mentality consisted of only needing things he needed not wanted. “Chris was very much of the school that you should own nothing except what you carry on your back at a deadpan.”(Krakauer 32) On the other hand, his parent’s belief was to give McCandless the most materialistic things he wanted. However, their mentality would ultimately displease him. Due to McCandless’s opposite beliefs and values from his parents additionally, creates another factor of why

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871 Words | 4 Pages

Into The Wild was a tremendous story which Shaun Callarman did not have many positive things to say about Chris McCandless, the main character. He went on this adventure to find out what life is all about in his own eyes. He wanted to see how different living in the wild really was compared to society because he was not satisfied with his living arrangements and household. Shaun’s quote says that he thinks “Chris McCandless was bright and ignorant at the same time. He had no common sense, and he had no business going into Alaska with his Romantic silliness.

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903 Words | 4 Pages

Going out into the wild all by yourself can be nerve wracking and lonely. Jon Krakauer makes Chris McCandless seemed like a noble person who took the initiative to try to go out and live into the wild. The book Into the Wild written by Jon Krakauer, is about a teenager named Chris McCandless leaving society and traveling to Alaska by himself with nothing else but a bag of rice and a small .22 caliber gun. Chris is heroic because he went to Alaska by himself without any knowledge of Alaska and didn’t know any of the dangers of Alaska. One way Krakauer make Chris seem noble is when Chris is about to enter Alaska he tells Gallien “ I’m goin’ to get on up there live off the land,go claim me a piece of the good life” (Krakauer 4).

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During the college years, Chris had gradually become disenchanted with his own well-off lifestyle and turned himself into an avid follower of Tolstoy’s asceticism, “In college McCandless began emulating Tolstoy’s asceticism and moral rigor to a degree that first astonished, and then alarmed, those who were close to him” (Krakauer, Author’s Note ). The reason why Chris hooked on asceticism was largely due to Chris’s changed perception of the world that “McCandless took life’s inequities to heart” (Krakauer 113), and “More and more of the classes he took addressed such pressing social issues as racism and world hunger and inequities in the distribution of wealth” (Krakauer 123) only reinforced his stances on the issue of social inequities. Seemingly, Chris considered practicing asceticism: living a frugal, abstinent, and austere life, as his expression of disapproving the unjust world. Subsequently, the asceticism which helped transform Chris into a totally spiritual person also made him a single-minded person with greater intransigence.

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Chris McCandless may first be described as a rebel and his inclination to abstain from the family he was brought up with. Krakauer says that he 'believed that wealth was shameful, corrupting, and inherently evil '. Despite that, Chris always liked money. Chris was also a very independent person who had a strong relationship with nature. Chris was also the kind of kid to always get good grades, without even trying to.

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765 Words | 4 Pages

In the beginning, McCandless starts his adventure by cutting himself off from all the human connections he had. He severs all ties from his family, including his sister which whom he was previously very close to. He burns his social security card, changes his name, and decides to travel across the country. Throughout his journey, Christopher often accounts for his parent’s wrongdoings for the reasons why he wanted to run away to Alaska. He subsists with a minimalist lifestyle and is disappointed in his parents’ behaviors and their materialism.

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Into The Wild “Although he was rash, untutored in the ways of the backcountry, he wasn 't incompetent—he wouldn 't have lasted 113 days if he were”. This comment from Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild conveys his belief that young Christopher McCandless who is the focus of his novel may have been young and inexperienced in regards to the Alaskan wilderness but he was capable of basic survival as he had demonstrated during his many day’s surviving the brutal environment of the Alaskan frontier. After Christopher McCandless met his untimely death alone in a school bus down the Stampede Trail in Alaska, Jon Krakauer received considerable criticism for his viewpoint that Christopher wasn’t “stupid, tragic and inconsiderate”. He firmly believed

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256 Words | 2 Pages

Chris McCandless was someone who didn’t believe in having money, and items that were materialistic. He was considered an idealist because he didn’t put judgement on people based on how they look, he did it based on his personal values. In the author’s note Krakauer also believed Chris was a “intense young man and possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not mesh readily with modern existence”. After getting your degree in college, and your parents buying you a new car you don’t think to just throw it all away to go live in the wild on your own, but that’s exactly what Chris did. Items that would seem extremely important to everyone one else in society didn’t matter to Chris, because it wasn’t a necessity for him.

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219 Words | 1 Pages

Secondly, most citizens would not hike across the country without having a main goal out of what they want planned. McCandless hiked steadily and excitedly all the way from South Dakota to Fairbanks, Alaska to be on his own. With a very small amount of food or clothes he stumbled upon an abandoned bus to live in to be away from people this continued to be McCandless’s paradise. Without the help of technology he used to sun for the time of day and hunting for his food instead of a grocery store. However being on his own McCandless decided to do his own way of society by starting with a Declaration of Independence for only his self but the main part declares, “No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild” (KraKauer 163).

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785 Words | 4 Pages

Kevin Sun Mrs. Cohen English 2CP --D February 22, 2018 Another Perspective The film Into the Wild is based on the life of Chris McCandless, a young man who rejected the consumerist society of America in order to live a more simple life. Through his travels, Chris carried essays by Transcendentalist philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, suggesting that McCandless is impacted by Transcendentalist ideals. Two key tenets of Transcendentalism that clearly influenced McCandless’ choices are the value of simplicity and the importance of self-reliance.

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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.

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462 Words | 2 Pages

In life some feel the need to prove something to others. That they are better, stronger, or even more intelligent. Whatever the case may be people will go through extreme measures to prove themselves. But who do we really need to prove anything to? Is it our parents?

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1650 Words | 7 Pages

Fahrenheit 451, a novel by Ray Bradbury, depicts a man named Guy Montag, a “fireman” who burns books. It is broken up into three sections; "The Hearth and the Salamander,” "The Sieve and the Sand,” and "Burning Bright.” Through a feminist, mythological, and Marxist approach we see that Bradbury’s story acknowledges gender inequalities and reflects the ideals of the times. From a feminist perspective it is apparent that the women in the story are unequal to men. All of the females in the story, other than Clarisse McClellan, are conditioned by society to be mindless.

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1044 Words | 5 Pages

Into the Wild portrays freedom in a sense that Christopher McCandless wants to venture out into the world, even though he had it all. Chris changes his way of life as he gives all of his personal items away as well as; $25,000 from his bank account, his car, and eventually his life. Reasons being that he leaves and does this, is due to the fact that he wants to be on his own and does not want people to depend on him as well as him having the feeling of having to require the obligations of the people around him. Chris had his next two years of college already paid for him by his family. Chris then goes on to tell his parents “I think I’m going to disappear for a while.”

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783 Words | 4 Pages

“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” ―Maya Angelou. Jon Krakauer’s true story titled Into the Wild is about a man who decides to throw away his old life and escape the rules of conventional society. Twenty-two-year-old Chris McCandless came from a well-to-do family in Virginia and, without warning, abandons everything. He changes his name, loses contact with his family, gives away his car and all his money, and begins a two-year long journey hitchhiking to Alaska where he eventually dies of starvation.

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664 Words | 3 Pages

What really drove Chris McCandless into the wild? I believe the top three of the countless reasons that drove McCandless into the wild was the emotional damage from his parents, rebellion of the youth & risk taking tendencies, and his hubris and detestation against authority and/or someone telling him what to do. Some may believe that Chris McCandless went into the wild because of his literary heroes Leo Tolstoy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau , and Jack London but the real reason he left everything was because of those reasons. In this essay I will elaborate on why I believe those are the reasons that drove McCandless into the wild.

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