Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau were two very similar, yet very different men. Thoreau and McCandless both went into nature to experience what living off the land would be like. Chris McCandless once wrote in a letter to Ron Franz, “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 57).
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.
The authors main point is that when you are in nature it blocks out any outside influence and allows you to think for yourself. Being alone for Emerson allowed for him to feel different and be at one with his surroundings. Thoreau’s short story, “Civil Disobedience” and Emerson’s short story “Nature” are examples of Transcendentalism because they include intuition, non conformity, spiritual well being, and individualism.
Humans need nature to survive, and they need to stop messing around with nature. Humans have destroyed the world and nature with pollution of all kinds, literally and figuratively. Thoreau wants people to get back to their roots, and to stop fighting over stupid things and just become authentic again and realize how important nature actually is to
John Muir and Henry David Thoreau both had a passion for nature and could see the natural life’s true beauty. Having a heavy impact on the creation of America’s national parks, John Muir was able to write multiple books on his profound experiences at these beautiful landscapes. According to an article written by PBS, John Muir “felt a spiritual connection to nature; he believed that mankind is just one part of an interconnected natural world …” ("John Muir (1838–1914)"). Similarly, Thoreau believed the connectivity of the people and nature existed and that nature was a way of life people should live by.
He talks about being connected with one's self and with the world around them. He elucidates, “I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society” (Thoreau). Nature big part of what Thoreau believes is important. The benefit of nature and explaining how people can be a part of nature reveals how he thinks of nature; Being a “Parcel” of something signifies being featured in a way that cannot be avoided (Cambridge dictionary). Being connected to nature allows a person to be more aware of their surroundings and the bigger picture of being a part of something.
Thoreau establishes his view of government immediately in part one, " government... is equally liable to be abused and perverted". Thoreau views the government as a corrupt establishment that is used to manipulate the people. Thoreau calls for "not at once no government, but instead a better government". Thoreau means by "a better government" a government with little power over the people and one that is not corrupted by legislatures. Thoreau says legislatures should be imprisoned for their intentions through their laws but are not because they are considered to be for the people.
As I walked into the vicinity of the woods, I looked behind me and into the distance before I entered. I stared at the stormy, low lying, smoky clouds that blanketed the sun and prevented its light from creeping through. The baby blue sky and the ray of light that poked out from the edges of the clouds lit up the day. The openness of the surroundings that laid outside the woods became absorbed into my mind and I began to think. I realized that there is so much more out there in the world and the universe.
He wrote about how technology and new lifestyles were continuously replacing what nature had established. He pointed out how nature was the window for people to find their own identity, which was fogged by the changes in society the industrial revolution had caused. Then, he continued to elaborate on how pure nature truly was by stating that all living things survive and live because of nature. Thoreau believes that society had lost itself in the tangles of its discoveries, and points to the solution of going back to
Transcendentalist writers were focused on the belief of the divinity of the individual soul, the inner voice, (Crawford, Kern & Needleman, 1961) to overcome social stereotypes and to avoid conformity. It is highlighted the importance to return to nature to enhance the quality of humans beings by living simply since being apart of common social rules is the only way to be in communion with nature’s wisdom. Those transcendental characteristics could be seen in Emerson’s ¨self-reliance¨ or Thoreau’s ¨Walden ¨ bearing in mind that although, Emerson’s ¨Self-reliance¨ adheres more descriptive examples to illustrate metaphors and Thoreau’s ¨Where I lived and what I lived for¨ introduces metaphors creating much more imagery, both make a critique of the modern individual using
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”).
The writings of Jon Krakauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Michael Donovan reflect some of the ideals of transcendentalism. In this essay, the writer will integrate, summarize, and explain the shared themes of their writings. Some of the ideals they share are staying in tune with nature and self-reliance. “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson is a short story that shows the foundation of transcendentalism, a non-traditional appreciation of nature. He writes “ There I feel that nothing can befall me in life-no disgrace, no calamity(leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.”
When Thoreau mentions that many philosopher import the woods to themselves, it must be for a reason. The woods and nature are needed in life, or human life may perish without
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau both fond nature to be essential to being a whole person: spiritually and emotionally. Emerson saw nature’s effect on people and their thoughts, whereas Thoreau saw the deliberateness of nature and thought that if people could seize the same decisiveness that they would have more to enjoy in life. Both authors believed that humans needed to enjoy nature to be one with the universal being that is the basis of Transcendentalism. Emerson wrote “When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind.” (Nature 693) Emerson was saying that nature is similar to poetry for the mind, in that it is relaxing and wholesome.
However there is a deeper connection between romanticism and nature all together. Many poets consider nature as the source of human ideas and emotions. “Henry David Thoreau says a poet who lived in a cabin on Walden Pond for two years, believed that people were meant to live in the world of nature”. Although the work of nature is characterized by search for self or identity, the poet William Wordsworth getting inspiration from Coleridge and nature wrote of the deeper emotions. Romanticism and nature are connected because the artists and philosophers of the romantic period romanticized the beauty of nature, and the power of the natural world.
