Into The Wild And Thoreau's Into The Wild

Human beings: wonderful creatures who must rely on others from time to time, and occasionally become overconfident in their abilities. In Walden; Or, Life in the Woods, Thoreau encourages self-reliance by articulating the benefits. Thoreau’s experiences influenced Chris McCandless, whose untimely death in Alaska inspired the book and movie Into the Wild. The book and movie about McCandless in turn drove others to become overconfident in their abilities to try to live in the wild, which led to dangerous situations and sometimes death.

Ralph Waldo Emerson a transcendentalist, wrote the influential essay Self-Reliance, in 1841. According to Emerson's philosophy of individualism "an individual who fails to be self-reliant—who does not attend to

Eighteen-year-old, Johnathan Croom's story presented itself in a nearly identical manner to that of twenty-four-year-old Chris McCandless that to ended in death. The similarities included abandonment of his green Honda, and how "Johnathan Croom...traveled with very few belongings: perhaps a small backpack and his phone, his father said. Left behind in the Honda was the teen's ID card, plus a sweatshirt, blanket and jug of water, things someone might need to survive in the wilderness."(Payne and Falcon). Excluding the fact that McCandless abandoned his car due to a flash flood, the comparison between the two is noticeable. Over the course of six months, "Johnathan's father, David Croom, said his son had shown a growing interest in the movie and possibly wanted to emulate McCandless' actions."(Payne and Falcon). Inspiration most plausibly drove the inexperienced 18-year-old who wanted to "live in the wild" to imitate McCandless with the confidence that he could indeed survive, which correlates with Johnathan's family's theory. With the tragic inexplicable situation, "Officers said they were treating the death...as suicide."(Wilson). Whether a suicide or not, the purpose to travel into the wilderness with little supplies, to achieve a self-reliant persona originated from the story of McCandless.

Surprisingly, a great fascination surrounded the abandoned bus around the globe. In 2010, a Swiss woman set out to look for the famous bus but tragically drowned. Three German men who had hiked into the wilderness looking for the bus survived because of a rescue by a police helicopter in May of