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Heart of darkness and light symbolism
Symbolism and motifs in the heart of darkness
Heart of darkness and light symbolism
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In an advanced society such as ours, there are still restrictions and censorship brought upon the citizens that causes freedom to be oppressed. Ultimate freedom is sought out by many in a quest to improve their living style, although a better life style is not always guaranteed. In the novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, both authors depict that having complete freedom challenges a persons’ true moral value, which makes the characters realize what truly matters to them and what they need. This realization causes their outlook towards society and life to change. To expand, ultimate freedom causes a person's life to be in jeopardy and in that moment, they realize what actually matters to them. Once complete freedom is achieved, a person understands what they need in order to attain inner peace. Furthermore, being in the wilderness with no restrictions challenges a person's moral values, that changes accordingly. Lastly, the surroundings of society helps to keep the inner darkness within a person controlled and hidden.
The wilderness can be viewed as a place of freedom or danger. Once a person enters the wilderness their life is at risk, but they have gained complete control over themselves. When a persons’ life is near an end because of the wilderness, they learn an important lesson and figure out what essentially matters to them. Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild identifies the importance of happiness as he is about to die in the Alaska wilderness. As McCandless is about to die, he writes in his personal log, “Happiness only real when shared” (Krakauer 189). This illustrates that McCandless, few moments before his death, realizes that isolating himself in order to gain free...
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...es had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way.” (Conrad 96). This illustrates that Kurtz let himself in darkness and starts following the savages tradition and culture. Kurtz loses all his human values and integrity when he starts to kills other human and starts hanging their skulls. The abundance of freedom and power has made Kurtz power hungry which caused him to let himself in darkness. In both texts the abundance of freedom caused Kurtz and McCandless to loose themselves in darkness. Without civilization watching humanity it cannot keep the darkness in check therefore the complete freedom caused McCandless and Kurtz outlook on life to be extremely dark and evil.
Work Cited
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor, 1997. Print.
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.
The day is unlike any other. The mail has come and lying at the bottom of the stack is the favored Outside magazine. The headline reads, “Exclusive Report: Lost in the Wild.” The cover speaks of a twenty four year old boy who “walked off into America’s Last Frontier hoping to make sense of his life.” The monotony of the ordinary day has now vanished from thought as Jon Krakauer’s captivating article runs through the mind like gasoline to an engine. The article is not soon forgotten, and the book Into the Wild is happened upon three years later. The book relates the full story of Christopher Johnson McCandless and how he left his family and friends after graduating college in order to find himself. Krakauer based the book off of his article on McCandless that was printed in January of 1993. From the time of writing the article to the printing of Into the Wild, Krakauer was obsessed with the tale of the boy who rid himself of society and later turned up dead in the Alaskan frontier. In the foreword of Into the Wild, Krakauer describes McCandless as “an extremely intense young man [who] possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not mesh readily with modern existence” and who was in deed searching for a “raw, transcendent experience” (i-ii). Krakauer is correct in assessing this conclusion about McCandless. This conclusion is seen throughout the book in many different assessments. Krakauer uses logical appeal, a comparison to his own life, and assumption to bring about his assessment of McCandless’ life.
The epigraphs presented by Krakauer before each chapter of the memoir Into the Wild dive deep into the life of Chris McCandless before and after his journey into the Alaskan wilderness. They compare him to famous “coming of age characters” and specific ideas written by some of his favorite philosophers. These give the reader a stronger sense of who Chris was and why he made the decision to ultimately walk alone into the wild.
The book Into The Wild, written by Jon Krakauer, tells the story of Chris McCandless a young man who abandoned his life in search of something more meaningful than a materialistic society. In 1992 Chris gave his $ 25,000 savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, and burned all of his money to chase his dream. Chris’s legacy was to live in simplicity, to find his purpose, and to chase his dreams. Chris McCandless’s decision to uproot his life and hitchhike to Alaska has encouraged other young adults to chase their dreams. Neal Karlinksy illustrates the love Chris had for nature in the passage, “He was intoxicated by the nature and the idea of a great Alasican adventure-to survive in the bush totally alone.”
In today’s world, we live in a society where we are subjected to follow rules, which are placed upon us by the society. Many people are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to follow the ideals of other people, or pursue their ideals and go against the prevailing conventions. In “Selections from Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, the author talks about a man named McCandless who went into the Alaskan wilderness in order to find his true self. His journey was also to escape from the societal norms of society. A person who goes into the wilderness believes that they can live their life with brute simplicity. This gives them little to no time with the complicated problems of modern society. Likewise, in “Waiting for a Jew” by Jonathan Boyarin, the author talks about one’s aspiration to find their identity and purpose in the community. He conveys that religious places, like shul, allow an individual to develop a cross- cultural self. The desires and expectations placed upon us by the society shape our strategies of personal identity; therefore, instilling fears that cause us to identify in opposition to our prevailing conventions.
Jon Krakauer, fascinated by a young man in April 1992 who hitchhiked to Alaska and lived alone in the wild for four months before his decomposed body was discovered, writes the story of Christopher McCandless, in his national bestseller: Into the Wild. McCandless was always a unique and intelligent boy who saw the world differently. Into the Wild explores all aspects of McCandless’s life in order to better understand the reason why a smart, social boy, from an upper class family would put himself in extraordinary peril by living off the land in the Alaskan Bush. McCandless represents the true tragic hero that Aristotle defined. Krakauer depicts McCandless as a tragic hero by detailing his unique and perhaps flawed views on society, his final demise in the Alaskan Bush, and his recognition of the truth, to reveal that pure happiness requires sharing it with others.
In Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild, he documents the events that led up to the death of Chris McCandless. McCandless was a teenage boy who dealt with tremendous amounts of pressure from his parents to do well in school and keep family secrets — they apologized for it through buying him things that they thought he needed. However, Chris hated this and just wanted peace, and honesty at home. There was one place in which Chris could get this, and it is in nature — there was no chaos or dishonesty amongst his family. Before he would go to college, he would drive to unknown places on his own — cherishing the peace that he gets. And when he decides to go to Alaska, his journey leads him to
When reading each page, a sort of investigation begins in trying to figure out how Kurtz became insane. However, that investigation was not fully closed because in the end no one knew what had happened to him. In a way his character presented the idea that perhaps the darkness, his darkness was his own and was all along in him waiting to come out. Because there were other men living and working in the Congo who had not become insane as he did, such as the Russian trader or the ivory company’s accountant.
In April of 1992 a young man named Chris McCandless, from a prosperous and loving family, hitchhiked across the country to Alaska. He gave $25,000 of his savings to charity, left his car and nearly all of his possessions. He burned all the cash he had in his wallet, and created a new life. Four months later, his body was found in an abandoned bus. Jon Krakauer constructed a journalistic account of McCandless’s story. Bordering on obsession, Krakauer looks for the clues to the mystery that is Chris McCandless. What he finds is the intense pull of the wilderness on our imagination, the appeal of high-risk activities to young men. When McCandless's mistakes turn out to be fatal he is dismissed for his naiveté. He was said by some to have a death wish, but wanting to die and wanting to see what one is capable of are too very different things. I began to ask myself if Chris really wasn’t as crazy as some people thought. Then I realized it was quite possible that the reason people thought he was crazy was because he had died trying to fulfill his dream. If he had walked away from his adventure like Krakauer, people would have praised him rather than ridicule. So I asked the question, “How does Krakauer’s life parallel Chris McCandlesses?”
You can write novels, poems, and short stories about it, but you’ll never truly understand the beauty of life until you experience it for yourself, until you immerse yourself in it. Every person has their own set of wants, needs, and desires. But it isn’t until you go out and do the things that you’ve imagined, that you really discover what you love. Every person has a unique mind; every person has the capacity to share different views. If you asked every person in the entire world what they believe the meaning of life is, you would receive several answers. Many would be different, but most would say something to the effect of “living a happy, healthy life.” Because we’re all so different, our own definitions of happiness are bound to differ from the next person. Christopher Mccandless' definition of happiness would have been simple. He wanted to find himself, who he really was deep down. In Into the Wild(1997) by Jon Krakauer, Mccandless didn't want to be the person his parents or society expected him to be, he instead wanted the rawness of life itself; and in order to achieve this, he left everything behind and ventured from place to place, eventually ending in Alaska. In chapter 17, Mccandless is compared to naval officer Sir John Franklin because some claim McCandless "lacked a requisite humility" and "possessed insufficient respect for the land." With these claims in consideration, McCandless is a young man who is arrogant because he is reckless and stubborn; however, he is also humble because he is gentle and kind.
His yearning, in sense, was too powerful to be quenched by human contact. The succor offered by women may have tempted McCandless, but it paled beside the prospect of rough congress with nature, with the cosmos itself. And thus was he drawn north, to Alaska” (66). These clear and intelligent principles of McCandless’s achievable attitude maintained his decision to endeavor into the wilderness because it displays that he was allured to it because of the gratification it would deliver him, one that could not be satisfied by a mere human. Krakauer shifts to his comparisons of other travelers before McCandless. “Reading of the monks, one is moved by their courage, their reckless innocence and their urgency of desire. And with that one can’t help but think of Everett Russ and Chris McCandless,” (Krakauer 97). The author declares this in order to exemplify a similarity of individuals who were in comparable situations like Chris and took the same
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.
The gripping tale of a young man who leaves all that he has and goes to live amidst the natural world, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer showcases the two years Christopher McCandless had spent journeying throughout the United States before his unfortunate death. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, McCandless disconnected with all of his past relations and abandoned the majority of his possessions. McCandless’ decisions either seem extremely unwise or extremely courageous. He had a comfortable life with few worries yet he still chose to toss it all away and venture into unknown territories. What many wonder is why he would do such an irrational thing. Maybe, McCandless’ was simply trying to run away from his perception of reality. Through deserting his family, friends, and material possessions, Christopher McCandless was attempting to escape the unavoidable condition of the world along with the mundane life ahead of him. He was escaping from the impending dreariness of his future and the idea of decisions impacting him and the people around him. Christopher McCandless appeared to believe that by going off into the wild, his life would no longer be surrounded by a shroud of uncertainty and despair.
In Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" the reader learns more and more about human nature as Marlow, Captain Willard, go farther and farther up the river in search of Kurtz. An evil side lies within every man, but this evil remains repressed by society. When moving up the river and farther away from civilization, the evil side begins to break out. Whenever basically different cultures meet we are led to discover ourselves and can even drive us to perceived madness.
“Into The Wild” by John Krakauer is a non-fiction biographical novel which is based on the life of a young man, Christopher McCandless. Many readers view Christopher’s journey as an escape from his family and his old life. The setting of a book often has a significant impact on the story itself. The various settings in the book contribute to the main characters’ actions and to the theme as a whole. This can be proven by examining the impact the setting has on the theme of young manhood, the theme of survival and the theme of independent happiness.