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An essay on character development
An essay on character development
An essay on character development
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Is it that hard living in the wilderness by yourself surrounded by animals that are looking to do anything to survive? You may not have the experience to answer this question, but the answer is yes as it's portrayed in the books "Hatchet" and "Julie of the Woods." Both the characters are struggling because the author lets you see that it really is hard living in the wild alone. First, in "Hatchet," Brian is a kid who is stranded in the wilderness alone and has trouble as wild animals are ruining his attempt to stay alive. In "Julie of the Woods," Miyax is stuck in the North Slope of Alaska trying to get a pack of wolves to help her find food but is struggling. Both characters are likely to make many mistakes because living in the wild for the …show more content…
This is proven in the excerpt of "Julie in the Woods" as it states, "Her hands trembled and her heartbeat quickened, for she was frightened, not so much of the wolves, who were shy and many harpoon-shots away but became of her desperate predicament." Miyax is frightened as she has no idea what she will do next in order to survive. Another way to portray Miyax is desperate. In the excerpt "Julie of the Woods," it states, "Miyax stared hard at the regal black wolf, hoping to catch his eye. She must somehow tell him that she was starving and ask him for food." This portrays her as desperate because she doesn't know how to speak to wolves and convince them, so she is using methods she used with different animals to make the wolves assist her. Both of the traits make you able to imagine Miyax as a …show more content…
In the excerpt of "Hatchet," it states, "A ladder, of course. He needed a ladder. But he had no way to fashion one, nothing to hold the steps on, and that stopped him until he found a dead pine with many small branches still sticking out. Using his hatchet, he chopped the branches off so they stuck out four or five inches, all up along the log, then he cut the log off about ten feet long and dragged it down to his shelter. It was a little heavy, but dry and he could manage it, and when he propped it up he found he could climb to the ledge with ease, though the tree did roll from side to side a bit as he climbed." Although he was stuck with nothing to help him reach the small ledge, he used the nature around him to build something to climb up to the ledge. Brian also is portrayed as lazy. In the excerpt of "Hatchet," it states, "The basic idea had been good, the place for his shelter was right, but he just hadn't gone far enough. He'd been lazy, but now he knew the second most important thing about nature, what drives nature. The food was first, but the work for the food went on and on. Nothing in nature was lazy. He had tried to take a shortcut and paid for it with his turtle eggs, which he had come to like more than chicken eggs from the store." Brian is lazy as he doesn't try his best and it cost him with the food that he found which got taken away from him. These two traits can also help you portray
Brian quickly made a fire using small pieces of bark that caught fire really fast. He now had warmth and a shelter, the only he needed was a steady food supply.
Many individuals decide to live their life in solitary; though, only a few choose to live in the wild. The book, Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer vividly paints the adventurous trek Chris McCandless went on. From the friends he made, to the hardships he went through, McCandless is portrayed as a friendly, sociable person despite the fact that he was a vagabond. Other than McCandless, there are even more individuals that have taken the risks to live in the wilderness such as, Jon Krakauer and Everett Ruess. All three of them had both similarities and differences between their own qualities as a person and their journey.
Hatchet by Gary Paulson is a fiction novel about a thirteen-year-old boy named Brian that survives a plane crash after the pilot dies of a heart attack and Brian is forced to land the plane himself, and in doing so, lands in a lake around the setting of a Canadian forest. Throughout the duration of the novel, Brian is to survive this dangerous situation with nothing except for a literal hatchet that was gifted to him by his mother prior to getting on the plane to go visit his father in the Canadian North Woods as his parents are newly separated after a recent divorce. Gary Paulsen was inspired to write Hatchet from his own life and personal experiences as both of his parents gave him a hard time growing up through their rocky marriage and unstable parenting as well as the fact that he grew up in the country and had to provide for himself. Hatchet also received a 1988 Newbery Honor award for its excellency. The fiction book is a piece of his life and it’s struggles as he wrote it to convey the following opinions: positivity can get you far no matter what the situation at hand may be, man can
Throughout Into the Wild, Krakauer portrays Christopher McCandless as an infallibly eager young man hoping to distance himself from the society he so obviously loathes, to "live off the land," entirely independent of a world which has "conditioned [itself] to a life of security." Chris, contrarily to this depiction, is disparagingly viewed by some as a "reckless idiot" who lacked the sense he needed to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. This derogatory assessment of Chris's mindset is representative of the society he hopes to escape and contains all the ignorance that causes him to feel this way. Nevertheless, he is misjudged by these critics, allowing Krakauer to hold the more accurate interpretation of Chris's character, his goals, and his accomplishments.
Many people dream about leaving everything behind and starting a new life, but it’s not as easy as it seems. Learning how to adapt to a new environment may be a challenge. In the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Christopher McCandless has no knowledge of the conditions he’s going to face when he arrives in Alaska. I would classify Christopher McCandless as a fearless crazy guy, because he leaves his well-shaped life behind. McCandless is not prepared for his expedition to Alaska, because he’s not familiar with the different lifestyles. Making all of these changes to his life like, detaching himself from his family and changing his name to Alexander Supertramp was a bad idea; because losing all of his connections means that he has no help from the people who really know him.
Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild, and Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man all tell the stories of a real-life character that makes the decision to venture out into the wilderness on his own. On one hand, Chris McCandless (Into The Wild), Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man), and Thoreau are similar in several ways. All three men record some kind of documentation about their journey; McCandless and Thoreau keep journals while Treadwell keeps a video log. Also, all three forced themselves to really live off the land using only the bare minimum of essentials. On the other hand, the men had several differences. In two of the stories, Into The Wild and Grizzly Man, the main character perishes as a result of his choice to live this way, while in Walden, Thoreau survives all the way through his experience. However, the most prominent differences between the characters were their reasons for venturing into the wild in the first place. Henry David Thoreau went into the woods “because [he] wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could learn what it had to teach, and not, when [he] came to die, discover that [he] had not lived” (Thoreau, Chapter II). His goal was to live his life simply yet richly in the wilderness. Chris McCandless went into the woods for a similar yet different reason. McCandless was opposed to living life the traditional way. He went into the wild to escape society and the traditional way of life. He wanted to prove to himself that he could survive out in the wild away from everything and everyone else. Finally, Timothy Treadwell makes his journey into the Alaskan wild for what he says is the protection of the bear population. His goal is to protect the bears fr...
Main Theme: The story Hatchet’s theme is determination, perseverance and survival. Brian Robeson, whose parents are divorced, flies to visit his father in Canadian wilderness. His pilot has a heart attack and dies. Brian managed to land the plane in a lake, and escape unharmed. Now comes the hard part, surviving in the wilderness until rescued. He does have one tool to help him, a hatchet that his mother had given him as a gift. He will have to use it, his own determination, imagination, perseverance and common sense to survive.
The novel “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer goes into great detail to describe the main character, Chris McCandless, who died traveling alone into the Alaskan wilderness. McCandless, whom in the novel renamed himself Alex, left his home and family to travel to Alaska in 1992. In Alaska McCandless planned to live an isolated life in the desolate wilderness, but unfortunately he did not survive. This non-fiction novel portrays his life leading up to his departure and it captures the true essence of what it means to be “in the wild”.
Facing hardships, problems, or obstacles shouldn’t discourage one from completing their task or job. Many of authors usually put their characters through tough complications to show the reader that no matter what happens; anyone could pull through. In the short story, “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connel, the main character Mr. Rainsford gets stranded on an eerie island with a bad reputation. He meets General Zaroff and gets thrown into a huge hunting game, where his life is on the line. In the end, he wins the game and will continue to hunt animals, but not people, as the general once did. He will continue to hunt because one, hunting means everything to him. Two, he will not continue the general’s crazy ways, and resort back to the legal and non-dangerous to other humans sport. Third, he feels powerful when he becomes the hunter and not the hunted. Giving up hunting would be like giving up his life, so just because of a minor block he had to overcome, he will not give up hunting.
The book Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, was a very interesting story about a young man going to live out in the wild of Alaska. This young mans name is Chris McCandless also known as Alex Supertramp. He had a lot of courage to go out this trip facing the wild. He has set high hopes for how young he is. Graduating college than leaving directly after graduating and burned all of his money and left his car and most possessions behind. His bravery definitely had a big impact on the story. With his bravery, it seemed like he has done this before and has no weariness. Chris was very independent on his trip. He received little help from people. He got work a few times to buy gear for his trip to Alaska, other than that he was either hitch hiking or walking.
Although everyone must explore and be adventurous to find who they are, they should do it in a rational way. In my point of view Chris McCandless was suicidal when he decided to enter the wild. John Krakauer, the author of Into the Wild, led us to believe through the shaved clean cut pictures of Chris that he was going to come home. However, I believe Chris did not intend to come home because of his unreasonable thinking and his unwillingness to prepare himself for the wild.
Living in the wilderness is difficult, but understanding the meaning of such lifestyle is even more difficult. One of the Christopher’s admirable qualities was that he was well aware of what he was doing. He knew about the difficulties and dangers that he would face into the wilderness, and was mentally prepared for that. Author Jon Krakauer says that “McCandless was green, and he overestimated his resilience, but he was sufficiently skilled to last for sixteen weeks on little more than his wits and ten pounds of rice. And he was fully aware when he entered the bush that he had given himself a perilously slim margin for error. He knew precisely what was at stake” (182). McCandless was an educated youth, who loved nature and dreamed of living in the Alaskan wilderness. Although he ignored to take many necessary things with him on this
People make bad choices in life every day, some may be recovered from whereas others have fatal consequences. A reporter named Jon Krakauer wrote a biography called Into The Wild which is about a young man named Chris McCandless who makes a fatal decision which lead to his demise in Alaska. Aron Ralton's book called Between a Rock and a Hard Place is about his near death experience from making a bad choice. His perseverance and problem solving skills become his salvation in the hot and dry terrain of Utah. Chris and Aron were both eager for adventure and both had a love for nature and the outdoors. Chris died because he lacked Aron's prior knowledge of survival tactics, making Chris ill prepared for his journey.
“There was just no talking the guy out of it,” Gallien recalls. “He was determined. He couldn’t wait to head out there and get started.” This precisely characterizes Christopher McCandless determination in Into the Wild because he says there was nothing he could not handle by himself. McCandless was not forced to live his life the way he did. He chose to abandon his nice life with all of his money as well as everyone and everything he had. He faced challenges every day that were much more difficult than the ones an average person would face on a daily basis. However, he still chose to stay fully committed to the way he was living his life.
Into the Wild, written by John Krakauer tells of a young man named Chris McCandless who 1deserted his college degree and all his worldly possessions in favor of a primitive transient life in the wilderness. Krakauer first told the story of Chris in an article in Outside Magazine, but went on to write a thorough book, which encompasses his life in the hopes to explain what caused him to venture off alone into the wild. McCandless’ story soon became a national phenomenon, and had many people questioning why a “young man from a well-to-do East Coast family [would] hitchhike to Alaska” (Krakauer i). Chris comes from an affluent household and has parents that strived to create a desirable life for him and his sister. As Chris grows up, he becomes more and more disturbed by society’s ideals and the control they have on everyday life. He made a point of spiting his parents and the lifestyle they lived. This sense of unhappiness continues to build until after Chris has graduated college and decided to leave everything behind for the Alaskan wilderness. Knowing very little about how to survive in the wild, Chris ventures off on his adventure in a state of naïveté. It is obvious that he possessed monumental potential that was wasted on romanticized ideals and a lack of wisdom. Christopher McCandless is a unique and talented young man, but his selfish and ultimately complacent attitude towards life and his successes led to his demise.