Into The Wild Transcendentalism Analysis

The Simplistic Living of Chris McCandless Around the 1830s-1840s, transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson founded an intellectual movement called transcendentalism. Like Emerson, Jon Krakauer writes with detailing transcendentalist keys in his book Into the Wild. In Into the Wild Krakauer shows his similar experiences through the character Chris McCandless. Krakauer uses transcendentalism by detailing the many keys McCandless portraits in the book. These keys are, goodness of humans and respect for other beauty, respect and beauty of nature, the importance of self-expression and self-reliance, non-conformity, and reducing dependence on property. Transcendentalist writers such as Krakauer, Emerson, and Thoreau reside their forms of writing by using these five keys of transcendentalism to show their readers examples of

This action represents goodness of humans and respect for other beauty. The reason behind this action being represented by this key is that instead of using the money for something else, McCandless shows his kindness by deciding to give every penny to charity. This charity’s purpose in particular is to help prevent starvation of families. I interpret that as foreshadowing, as later in the book, McCandless actually dies from starvation and food poisoning. The poem that best relates to this action is “Water, is taught by thirst” by Emily Dickinson. This poem relates to McCandless’ actions, because in the poem, Dickinson’s explanation of the poem “Water, is taught by thirst” is that a person does not know what they truly have, until whatever they had becomes lost or no longer available to them anymore. McCandless did not know what starvation was truly like until he decided to become a