Transcendentalism In Into The Wild, By Jon Krakauer

Transcendentalism is a philosophy that emphasizes a prior condition of knowledge and experience or the unknowable character of ultimate reality or that emphasizes the transcendent as the fundamental reality (Merriam Webster). Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Fredric Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. They were critics of their society for its conformity, and urged that each person find “an original relation to the universe.” Chris McCandless, the focus of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, was a transcendentalist. The author of Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer’s purpose is to spread Chris McCandless’s story while explaining transcendentalist ideas, such as nonconformity. Chris McCandless rebelled against society because of a dysfunctional family by taking his trip into the wild and bringing the transcendentalist views of solitude and nature as a spiritual place with him on his journey.

Chris lived in a very violent household. He went into nature to flee “ the claustrophobic confines of his family (Krakauer, 55).” Carine describes an incident in which Chris finds out more about his parent's relationship.“ Their fraudulent marriage and our father’s denial of his other son was for Chris a murder of every day’s truth. He felt his whole life turned like a river suddenly reversing the direction of its flow. Suddenly running uphill (Lamothe).”Carine proceeded to say, “These revelations struck at the core of Chris’s sense of identity. They made his entire childhood seem like fiction. Chris never told them he knew and made me promise silence as well (Lamothe).” McCandless’s dad abused his wife Billie. Billie would call her kids in to watch the violence. Chris had no stability whatsoever at home and this is what caused his transcendentalist actions and