Compare And Contrast Davidson And Mccandless

Into The Whiteness: A Comparative Essay of Tracks and Into the Wild Society views those who venture into the wild either as brave or as fools, and this all depends on their survival. Robyn Davidson and Chris McCandless are examples of such adventurers. Davidson tells her own story of how she crossed the west Australian desert to the Indian Ocean in 1971 with a pack of camels and her dog in her novel, Tracks. McCandless’s story of how he left his family and home for the wild is told by Jon Krakauer in Into the Wild, written years after McCandless’s unfortunate death in Alaska in 1992. Davidson and McCandless have many similarities, and differences, in their own relationships with media, gender, technology, marginal people, nature, and survival,

He believed that only when one level of needs was met, another could be achieved. He proposed five levels, at the bottom is basic biological needs, then one’s safety needs, a need for love and affection, needs for esteem, both self-esteem and respect from others, and at the top was the need for self-actualization. Both Davidson and McCandless were on a quest for self-actualization, and from that we can infer that they had conquered all other levels of needs. Maslow theorizes that people who do not achieve the full hierarchy, do not achieve it because of deterrents in society, such as racism, homophobia and sexism. Although Davidson is a women and lived in a “cult of misogyny” (Davidson, 18) in Australia, her and McCandless were both hetero, supposedly, and came from well to do, Caucasian families putting them in a position of privilege. Also, one can infer from the fact that they are both willing to put their biological needs at risk, that they had never been in the positon previously in which their wellness was threatened. For example, someone who had previously been at risk of dying of hunger would never put themselves at risk of running out of food again. NEED

One can consider Davidson’s trek a feminist quest to break down traditional gender roles. Early on in her tale Davidson informs the reader of Australia’s history of misogyny, how women were brought over with sheep when the men realized that’s all the island needed. By comparing women to sheep in her writing, Davidson shows the reader how little is thought of women’s worth, how women are timid, weak and sheepish. By independently going across the desert she is openly defying the roles pushed on her by the society in which she was raised. McCandless’s relationship with his gender differs greatly, probably due to the fact that his does not have as many constricting binaries. In his quest to emulate his literary heroes, McCandless’s journey is not only one to find himself, but to also return to the historical role of a man, a role that had nothing to do with modern