In the 2013 online article, “The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem”, author Diana Saverin describes the Alaskan wilderness travel phenomenon along with attempting to uncover the ‘McCandless Pilgrims’ “root of motivation. Sparked by the release of both Jon Krakauer’s and Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild”, numerous individuals pack their backpacks and eagerly step into their (sometimes newly-bought) hiking shoes and tramp into the Alaskan Wild to pay homage to their hero Chris McCandless. Filled with personal anecdotes and interviews, Severin’s Outside article takes a new approach Into the Wild commentary by directing attention to the lives McCandless’s story affected indirectly rather than critiquing on McCandless himself. In response to what appears to be a huge amount of troubled McCandless-inspired tramping stories, Saverin provides an unbiased rationale as a attempt to explain why so many are “willing to risk injury, and even death, to..visit the last home of Alaska’s most famous adventure casualty”. Saverin begins her article with anecdote- telling the unfortunate experience of young lovers and adept adventure seekers, Ackerman and Gros.
In chapters 14 and 15 of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer becomes more than just an investigator or a narrator, he becomes a character. He tells his story of climbing the Devils Thumb, which exposes the similarities between himself and McCandless. This aids to his understanding of McCandless’s motivations, without ever meeting him, due to the parallels in their personalities and family issues. Chapter 14 is devoted to Krakauer’s story about his youthful love for mountain climbing. At age 23, he plans to do a dangerous climb on the Devil’s Thumb in Alaska alone. “
One of the first of the Transcendental beliefs shared by Thoreau and McCandless is being one with nature. In Walden, Thoreau indicates “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front the simple facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach” (Walden). When Thoreau says this, one can infer that he wanted to be one with nature. Just as in Into The Wild where McCandless indicates that he is “no longer to be imprisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land
In Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, Henry David Thoreau the author, uses the rhetorical strategies of personification, metaphor, and allusion/symbolism in the chapter “Conclusion” to describe what he learned from his experiment of living in Walden Pond. Thoreau’s main message of what he learned is to be undefined by what’s in front. Without the limits of conformity, humans have the capacity to achieve much greater and beautiful dreams and goals. Conformity is the boundary that doesn’t let individuals reach their great potential. Thoreau uses effective personification to imply the significance of following one’s dreams confidently.
In the biography of Christopher McCandless, Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer writes “It’s not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.” Christopher McCandless’s journey was one of a courageous and brave young man that went Into the Wild. McCandless chose to abandon the material things that society believes are needed to survive and even though his dream was viewed as unrealistic, McCandless followed it. “I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth. “ A quote Chris McCandless wrote in his journal.
Throughout Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, there are many details that help give the reader a deeper, more profound, meaning of the book 's intended purpose. Krakauer is one of the most renowned American writers, publishing many books specifically focused on nature, and people’s struggles with nature. Through much of the book, Krakauer incorporates many literary techniques, such as connotation, diction, ethos, pathos, logos, imagery, and syntax, to help each reader grasp the essence of the book. These aspects are utilized many times throughout each chapter in his book. By using a wide range of literary techniques, Krakauer is able to communicate the events that transpired during the book, in a way that pertains to each
In the chapter titled Where I Lived, and What I Lived For from Henry David Thoreau’s novel Walden, the author utilizes rhetorical strategies such as imagery and tone to convey how the distractions that accompany a progressing civilization corrupts society. Since he is a transcendentalist, his argument encapsulates the same principles of becoming free from the binds of society and seeking harmony with nature. He emphasizes those ideals when he states that “[he] went to the woods because he wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when [he] came to die, discover that [he] had not lived”(276). In other words, he wanted to escape from society and live
Into The Wild was a tremendous story which Shaun Callarman did not have many positive things to say about Chris McCandless, the main character. He went on this adventure to find out what life is all about in his own eyes. He wanted to see how different living in the wild really was compared to society because he was not satisfied with his living arrangements and household. Shaun’s quote says that he thinks “Chris McCandless was bright and ignorant at the same time. He had no common sense, and he had no business going into Alaska with his Romantic silliness.
I think that Thoreau means when he says, "The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels?" is that people are too often stuck in reality. I believe that he is trying to say that individuals need to be themselves and stop worrying about what society thinks of them. Thoreau is telling people to make their own paths of life and strive on what they think is true and base their live on their own hopes and dreams. Henry David Thoreau’s message in the final paragraph is stating that our lives are based off of perspective. Everything we see is through the idea of perspective.
Thoreau left society and normal habits to live in the woods with nature around him. Usually society lives as a community, but Thoreau broke that rule and lived by himself in the
The divinity of life through spirit rather than material, and in nature rather than in society, was tested and actively advocated by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The transcendentalist movement spoke of individualism and a plain lifestyle. As society develops, these simplistic ideals become an “unrealistic” way of life due to the dependence we must have on things other than our own self. However, the film Into the Wild denies this idea as it traces a man’s life and independent survival in the wilderness. Into the Wild illustrates the values of transcendentalism by portraying a man’s spiritual journey through the experiences of nature, self-reliance, and rejection of the material world.
By being in contact with the nature there is an ethereal feeling of knowing everything. The air you breathe is the purest of all; the sights you see are the goodness and freshness of the universe. In that moment the whole universe transpires to make that moment yours and you seem to move into a transcended stage of utter joy and serenity. Thoreau held deeply felt political views, opposing slavery and the Mexican-American War.
The reader gets to join McCandless in his adventure across the country as he invents a new life for himself. He embraces the ideas and morals of Thoreau and Emerson in his journey. In the book, a man by the man by the name of Westerberg discusses about how McCandless is not destroying his possessions and journey around the wild because the wild he is suicidal or unintelligent. “You could tell right away that Alex was intelligent… He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.”
Christopher McCandless, a 29-year-old dreamer, went on the journey of a lifetime to involve himself with nature and being truly independent. He had lived a life of privilege, made amazing grades in school, and even went to school at Emory College, getting degrees in both history and anthropology. Even though he seemed to have everything good going for him, it’s not the life he wanted. McCandless decides after law school to go deep into the “wild”, with no map, no resources. All he kept was a small journal and camera in which he captured and recorded all of his experiences in, allowing people for the rest of time to read and learn about his journey in his book titled Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer.
He talks about how “the leaves and tender twigs are an agreeable food to many domestic animals,” emphasizing on how all living things depended on nature (Wild Apples 1). This led to the idea that without nature humans cannot survive, so people cannot neglect nature. He pointed out how “the fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, along with that of flowers” portraying a message to others by telling them that they should not forget nature due to their technological advancements (Wild Apples 1). Thoreau later on states “I saw a vigorous young apple-tree… uninjured by the frosts, when all cultivated apples were gathered.(Wild Apples 1)” This can be seen as an allusion towards transcendentalists, who, despite being outnumbered, continued to believe and have faith in nature while the rest of the world has been injured by “frosts” or technology and corruption.
