Examples Of Transcendentalism In Into The Wild

Into the Wild: Transcendentalism Into the Wild is a harrowing account of the events surrounding a young individual’s death by Jon Krakauer. A question is presented within this novel about whether this man’s actions make him a transcendentalist or not. Christopher John McCandless is a modern-day transcendentalist in the minds of those who wish they were, but he is only a childish rebel in the minds of those who would think of themselves as, perhaps, realists. The type of people that idolize McCandless are the whimsical naturalists that trick themselves into thinking they are somehow more self-enlightened than those who take a more reasonable and levelheaded approach to life. “McCandless...read like...an above average, somewhat histrionic

He was an intense being who didn’t take anything lightly. McCandless was bothered by simple things like the “necessity” to own the latest and prettiest thing, like a car. If something or someone troubled Chris, he couldn’t just brush it off. His father’s adultery and the things expected of him were too much to handle for an idealist like himself. And so he ran away, into the wild. “At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence (Krakauer, 22).” The interesting thing is that many individuals develop destructive habits or lifestyles when having gone through situations similar to Chris’. Why did Chris choose to become a transcendentalist, rather than an alcoholic or someone with expensive taste? What does this say about Chris? It seems that this would have to be simply the nature of Chris and his family. After all, the McCandless family was almost entirely normal and stable except for this one little blip. This must be why Chris developed just an exaggerated teenage angst rather than any normally destructive

This group of individuals also feels an admiration for nature and disgust with most of humankind. They focus on escape rather than fixing any actual problems, because if you ignore it, it doesn’t exist, right? “I did not wish to live what was not life…(Emerson, Self Reliance).” This is a false ideal and lets people trick themselves into believing that being lazy is okay. Being lazy is talking about how you hate the government or America but not bothering to try and fix it, or at least dissociating yourself with it. Love it or leave it, as they say. These “lazy” persons would like to call themselves transcendentalists because they would like to think that they have somehow reached the spiritual level of Maslow’s hierarchy. As shown in Into the Wild, most of these “transcendentalists” do not have healthy relationships with anyone, sometimes including themselves. As exemplified in Maslow’s hierarchy, one must first have healthy social relations in order to even begin searching for a spiritual level of satisfaction. Thoreau, for instance, was a reasonable transcendentalist who had successful relationships with other humans, like Emerson and Krakauer. Transcendentalists would like to argue that the things that people fight for and try to fix do not amount to or mean anything in the end, that we are all going to die someday anyway and that if it doesn’t truly last then it is utterly