Mortality In Looking For Alaska
Krakauer describes his attempts at climbing the Devil’s Thumb when he was 23 years old and compares it to McCandless. The credibility it provides is the insight and thoughts that McCandless might have had on his odyssey as a young man finishing his own greatest achievement. To Krakauer, “the Devil’s Thumb was the same as medical school, only different” (Krakauer 150). To McCandless, it is likely his adventure in Alaska was the fulfillment he needed after following his parents’ wish of finishing college. Both Krakauer and McCandless had problems with their father’s falsehood and losing the innocence that they once had.
Christopher McCandless, the main focus from Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild observes the factors that impacted Chris McCandless to his unfortunate death at the age of 24 in August of 1992 on Stampede Trail, Alaska in attempts to live off the land. Richard Russo who grew up to write his own memoir Elsewhere describing his “American childhood, as lived in the Fifties by a lower-middle class that seems barely to exist anymore” (Russo, 12, 2012). Russo grew up with his mother, Jean Russo, who had Obsessive compulsion disorder, which he tries make sense of the guilt associated with his mother after her death. The two had been impacted developmentally different by the chronosystem and interaction of the microsystems. The unalike interactions explain the differing outcome of the two.
At first he realizes small things such as in saying, “Weed production is both an art and a science,” (Norberg, 200), in this he realizes that society adores art and science, yet society as a whole is strongly opposed to drugs. He soon comes to realize all his wasted times and in addition, the downfalls of drugs following his brother losing his job. He says, “I spent a long time looking at the mural the first time I took acid,” (Norberg, 236). At this place in his life he realizes all his wasted time reflecting back on the time wasted on drugs. Than he hears about his brother being fired from his job for being, “Tooo wasted,” (Norberg, 279).
Family, friends, and possessions pressure individuals through the imposition of values that contribute to identity; we are told that we obtain our qualities simply by inheritance and association. The environment one chooses to surround themselves reflects similar learned behaviors and thought processes. Deviating from the norm is often contemptible, but natural, according to author Jon Krakauer. Realizing that he did not want to become a carbon copy of his parents and environment, Christopher McCandless wandered the American West for two years, as a nomad, to reject society as he knows it―his family, friends, and possessions. He burns his money, abandons his car, and cuts all ties with his family on an identity crisis that would lead to his death in the inhospitable Alaskan tundra.
“So many people live in unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation” (57). Chris McCandless was determined to not be one of those men, he strived for a life in solitude, away from the demands of society. For that reason he went on an epic transcendental experience that took him from Mexico to Alaska. Along the way, he met and made an impact on peoples’ lives, people like Wayne Westenberg and Ronald Franz. Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild discusses Chris’s journey, and makes the reader question Chris’s reasons for going out into the wild.
Author’s lives inspire their writing in many ways. An illustrious writer, Edgar Allan Poe, experienced continuous sufferings throughout his life. The heartaches he faced transferred into his writing. Poe’s works are dark and traumatic, such as “The Pit and the Pendulum.” He uses the unthinkable and shapes short stories out of them.
In the novel, As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner shapes the plot based on the looming presence of the absentee protagonist, Addie Bundren. The reader’s knowledge of Addie accumulates through the monologues of other characters, so the reader gains only bits and pieces of Addie’s character. However, after her death, the reader obtains a better understanding of Addie’s voice through her own monologue and as a result, is characterized as cold and selfish. Through the use of similes and interior monologue, Faulkner shows Addie’s tendency to detach herself from the people in her life, which relates to the novel’s overall theme of solitude as Addie adheres to her father’s philosophy that the reason for living is no more than “to get ready to stay dead a long time” (169).
Christopher McCandless, whose life and journey are the main ideas of the novel “Into the Wild”, was about an adolescent who, upon graduating from Emory College, decided to journey off into the Alaskan wilderness. He had given away his savings of $25,000 and changed his name to Alex Supertramp. His voyage to Alaska took him two years during which he traveled all across the country doing anomalous jobs and making friends. He inevitably made it to Alaska were he entered the wilderness with little more than a few books, a sleeping bag and a ten pound bag of rice. A couple months after his first day in the wild, his body was found in an abandoned bus.
To begin, it’s important for the two poets to led the readers to understand the context about death behind their poems and how it has inspired them to write about it. Throughout Dickinson’s life, she has experienced death in many ways and forms: with that, death has made a great impact in her writings. In Dickinson’s poem, “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –,” Dickinson looks into the physical procedure of dying and how it affects not just herself, but others as well. When Dickinson was dying on her deathbed, she describes the fly as a figure of the theme death itself, as the wings of the fly basically cuts off the speaker of the poem. For Whitman, he has experienced death in the time of the Civil War.
Symbols in Looking for Alaska. In John Green’s novel Looking for Alaska there are many symbols ranging from cigarettes to flowers. The symbols in this novel play a major role in helping to better understand the novel and it’s meaning.
The Alaskan Bush is one of the hardest places to survive without any assistance, supplies, skills, and little food. Jon Krakauer explains in his biography, Into The Wild, how Christopher McCandless ventured into the Alaskan Bush and ultimately perished due to lack of preparation and hubris. McCandless was an intelligent young man who made a few mistakes but overall Krakauer believed that McCandless was not an ignorant adrenalin junkie who had no respect for the land. Krakauer chose to write this biography because he too had the strong desire to discover and explore as he also ventured into the Alaskan Bush when he was a young man, but he survived unlike McCandless. Krakauer’s argument was convincing because he gives credible evidence that McCandless was not foolish like many critics say he was.
Anne Fadiman’s “Under Water” strikingly relates a particularly morbid, yet surreal experience: the death of a teen, Gary, in a freak canoeing accident. From writing about this particular incident, Fadiman reflects her own development and maturation as a person, from an “impatient” person to one who is “no longer in a hurry.” However, in a more general sense, the essay also deals with how people react to death. In the seventh paragraph of “Under Water,” Fadiman’s use of personification and the use of a metaphor describing the body of Gary highlights how individuals insistently attempt to detach themselves from death, refusing to accept the truth of the situation, ultimately damaging themselves in the process.
In Brave New World, imagery plays a huge role on the success of the novel. Huxley impacts his novel full of imagery which makes the book easier to visualize. For instance, when Huxley describes Linda, the mother of John, “A very stout blonde squaw stepped across… Lenina noticed with disgust that two of the front teeth were missing. And the colour of the ones that remained. . .It was worse than the old man.
For example, Krakauer employs Ron Franz’s account of Chris and mentions how Franz “regards the world through wary blue eyes” because of Chris’ death (59). Franz’s account evokes emotion to demonstrate the indelible impression Chris has on those he meets. Krakauer loads his story with emotion to allow the readers to sympathize with Chris’ plight; thus, Krakauer’s emotions influence his writing which prevents his ability to remain objective. Moreover, the author recalls the “wrenching loneliness” of his own journey with the Devil’s Thumb in Alaska (151). Krakauer recounts the hardships of his journey to indicate Chris’ emotional state during his journey.
In “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, Emily Dickinson uses imagery and symbols to establish the cycle of life and uses examples to establish the inevitability of death. This poem describes the speaker’s journey to the afterlife with death. Dickinson uses distinct images, such as a sunset, the horses’ heads, and the carriage ride to establish the cycle of life after death. Dickinson artfully uses symbols such as a child, a field of grain, and a sunset to establish the cycle of life and its different stages. Dickinson utilizes the example of the busyness of the speaker and the death of the sun to establish the inevitability of death.
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