Examples Of Transcendentalism In The Wild

Chris McCandless was a product of his privilege, and the confidence that resulted from that made him naive to the brutal truths of the world. Countless times he failed to listen to the lifesaving advice he received from others simply due to his pride. Had he done even one thing differently, such as getting a better hunting gun or even studying more, he could have avoided starvation, the cause of his eventual death. McCandless came from a dysfunctional family, and once he discovered that, he took it pretty hard. His original love for nature, and his confidence in natural talent, only increased when he learned about his father’s second family. He turned to transcendentalism as a way to find meaning as to why someone would do such a thing, and

He idealized fictional stories of unrealistic experiences in the wild. Nature plays a huge role in transcendentalism as one of its tenets. The focus is specifically on finding meaning in nature and the world around you. The way McCandless interpreted this was as if the only way to find meaning and happiness were in the wild. As previously mentioned, McCandless used transcendentalism as a way to cope with his family problems and excuse his reckless behavior. He started going on his adventures as soon as he got the chance. They slowly became longer and longer, until they were for months on end, and no communication with his parents. This got his parents used to the idea of his son being away for so long, and it gave him the confidence to make himself believe he could go on increasingly more dangerous adventures. He used transcendentalism to instill this false sense of confidence that made him believe he could accomplish anything on his own, taking the tenets of confidence and self-reliance to a dangerous extreme. This misinterpretation of transcendentalist literature is what caused the death of many young men such as

He genuinely believed that he was the only one able to truly apply the tenets of transcendentalism, and find meaning in every one of them. He took each philosophy to heart and found nonconformity in the way he truly thought he was the one who would find the true meanings of life and the way people act the way they through transcendentalism. Now, you can argue that in some way he was. The publicity McCandless’s story got will undeniably make this case different than someone who was only on the local news in their hometown. You have to remember though, that McCandless wasn’t any different than the countless other people who thought of themselves as “modern-day transcendentalists,” when in reality, they just took silly fantasies too