Jon Krakauer, Chris Mccandless And Henry David Thoreau

Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless, and Henry David Thoreau express the aspects of Transcendentalism in their three points of view. Transcendentalism is based on the belief that human beings have self-wisdom and may gain this knowledge or wisdom by how nature flows. It has three common themes: self-wisdom, nature and its meaning, and social reform. Chris McCandless’s life expressed in Krakauer’s Into the Wild is similar to the Transcendental beliefs of Thoreau’s Walden. The first Transcendental point of Chris McCandless’s and Henry David Thoreau’s lives is their dislike of material possessions. McCandless says, “I don’t want to know what time it is. I don’t want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters” (Krakauer 7). This shows that McCandless does not think that one needs material possessions to be successful. That is similar to that of Thoreau when he says, “men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour without a doubt…” (Thoreau). This expresses that Thoreau thinks that men would rather live on the basic needs of life rather than have the luxury. They do not think that one needs the extra things to be happy. All of this shows how Chris McCandless and

Jim Gallien, a man who picks Chris up and becomes his friend, admits that Alex’s only food in his pack is a ten-pound bag of rice (Krakauer 4). This shows that Alex intends on living life very simply. Thoreau has the same mind frame as Chris. He says, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand” (Thoreau). This expresses the idea that Thoreau also lives a very simple life. Both men are very determined to live their lives in the wild in the simplest way possible. They are not interested in having an excess amount of