The novel Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, tells the true story of a young man named Chris McCandless who left his life, his family, and everything he ever had to go out into the Alaskan bush north of Mt.Mckinley in April 1992. Chris gave away all of his saving which was $25,000, renamed himself Alex Supertramp and was found decomposed, after the last person saw him, by four moose hunters on an abandoned bus called Bus 142(Krakauer 1). The question still remaining today is if Chris McCandless was a true transcendentalist and to know if Chris was a true transcendentalist you first have to know what the word means. Transcendentalism is an intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual ferment(Harding 1). Chris McCandless is a true transcendentalist because of his drive to push hard at accomplishing things, his spiritual values, and his liking to being alone sometimes.
From the very beginning Chris
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loved to try and push himself to the limits. When Chris was twelve and the whole family, with kids from both marriages, went to climb Longs Peak in Colorado(Krakauer 109). While climbing, Walt, Chris, and Walt’s youngest kid from his first marriage reached the 13,000 foot elevation. Walt was done and started to head back down but Chris wanted to keep going. Walt had said no and at that age of twelve all Chris could do was complain. Later on in Chris’s life when he was in high school, Chris was the captain of the cross country squad. As said by one of his younger teammates Gordy Cucullu “Chris invented this workout called Road Warriors: He would lead us on long, killer runs through places like farmers’ fields and construction sites...and intentionally try to get us lost…. The whole idea was to lose our bearings, to push ourselves into unknown territory”(Krakauer 112). These two different times in Chris’s life both prove that he pushed himself a lot of the time, basically his whole life, to his limits to accomplish a certain goal. When Chris went into the wild, he was alone because he choose to be alone with no one else and no communication with anyone else. Chris didn’t need others to show him what to do or how to live his life. His little sister, Carine, said “Even when we were little, he was very to himself. He wasn’t antisocial-he always had friends, and everybody like him-but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely”(Krakauer 107). Chris wasn’t very relying on other things or others. Chris was a self reliant kid who could find his own ways to entertain himself and keep himself out of trouble. In addition to pushing himself and enjoying being alone by himself, Chris had some spiritual values that he appreciated both while he was in the wild and before he went into the wild. As another one of Chris’s friends from the cross country team recalls “Chris would use the spiritual aspect to try to motivate us. He’d tell us to think about all the evil in the world, all the hatred, and imagine ourselves running against the forces of darkness, the evil wall that was trying to keep us from running our best”(Krakauer 112). Chris used his spiritual views to try and motivate his teammates and basically himself to try harder. In this case it was to push him and his teammates to go faster. Another quote about having spiritual views is “Transcendentalism espoused the idea ‘that man has ideas, that come not through the five senses, or the powers of reasoning; but are either the result of direct revelation from God, his immediate inspiration, or his immanent presence in the spiritual world’”(McIlhenny 2). This quote from the article American Transcendentalism: A History/The Transcendentalists is explaining how people became transcendentalists to connect with their spiritual side and try to become one with nature and try to live with the most experience in life without everyday things like a phone. Now it could be argued that Chris McCandless was not a true transcendentalist.
“It would be easy to stereotype Christopher McCandless as another boy who felt too much, a loopy young man who read too many books and lacked even a modicum of common sense”(Krakauer 184). Some people say that Chris was just a normal guy who read too many books and let it all get into his head and drive him crazy to the point where he would go out into the Alaskan wilderness with no one or no supplies. Although this may be true, there are more facts and evidence to prove that Chris is a true transcendentalist. “But the stereotype isn’t a good fit. McCandless wasn’t some feckless slacker, adrift and confused, racked by existential despair. To the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose”(Krakauer 184). What Krakauer means is that the stereotype that people have against Chris is not true and that he choose to go out into the wild because it’s what he wanted to do like how some people want to go skydiving or go to Paris. Chris is a true transcendentalist and there is much to prove
that. As shown above and stated many times, Chris McCandless is a true transcendentalist. This has been shown through his past, his eagerness to push himself to the limits, his spiritual values, and through the history of American transcendentalism. People will still try and argue as to whether or not Chris was a true transcendentalist, but there are much more details to show that he was a true transcendentalist. In my opinion, I believe that Chris McCandless is a true transcendentalist and is not crazy or insane, but just wanting to live his life with more adventure.
In the film Into the Wild directed by Sean Penn, viewers may have gathered enough evidence to back up their thoughts on Christopher McCandless being a transcendentalist or a non-transcendentalist. Chris portrayed the effort of being a transcendentalist just as Ralph Waldo Emerson and David Thoreau did. He abandoned his nice life to hitchhike all over North America and he was happy about it. McCandless unfortunately died in the wilderness of Alaska after he had eaten moldy seeds. Sooner or later, that mistake was enough to end his life. He shows behavior of being a Transcendentalist by the ways that he despised society, burned his money after he abandoned his car, and went out to Alaska on his own.
Beliefs are what define humans not as a society, but as individuals. Individualism is a large part of Transcendentalism, which was a movement started in the mid-nineteenth century led by figures such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Into the Wild, written in 1997 by Jon Krakauer, is a modern novel that examines a transcendentalist young adult. That young man is Chris McCandless, who leaves his family at the age of 23 to live the Transcendentalist dream. He hitchhikes and travels through many rivers and cities to get to Alaska, the place where he believes he can finally experience that dream. Transcendentalism is the idea that humans are innately one with nature, and therefore God, and that nature is the only place where humans belong because society is poisonous. By enjoying himself and connecting with god through the environment in an isolated location, Chris McCandless demonstrates that he is a faithful Transcendentalist.
Chris McCandless was a young man from Washington, D.C.. In an effort to live closer to nature, he abandoned his life and education at university studying. He gave his life savings to a charity and started hitchhiking and traveling for almost two years. He eventually finds himself in Alaska, where he lived for four months before he unfortunately died due to starvation. McCandless’ journey was in tune with the movement of transcendentalism, a movement in which its founders were a strong inspiration to Chris. Chris McCandless was very in tune with his surrounding and the nature within it and his connection with it. A turning
Transcendentalism is a religious, philosophical, literary, and social movement of the nineteenth century. Essentially, this movement was based upon the ideals of the “sixth sense,” nature, and non-conformity, as well as individualism, intuition, idealism, imagination, and inspiration. A few of the works and writings featured in the transcendental unit include Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, The Beatification of Chris McCandless: From Thieving Poacher into Saint by Craig Medred, and Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The primary focus of this essay is to provide an opinion on a strikingly debatable topic; Whether or not Christopher McCandless, hero of Krakauer’s Into the Wild, was a true transcendentalist. Despite the bold actions of Chris McCandless on his daring Alaskan odyssey, he turned out to be far from a true transcendentalist, failing to meet the definition of transcendentalism, being solely concerned with himself, and acting out of revenge rather than seeking self discovery - nothing more than a childish suicidal rebel.
Chris McCandless: a man so infatuated with nature, he practically committed suicide to bring himself nearer to it. This extreme liking for nature, along with other ideals, makes up the core tenets of the transcendentalist philosophy. McCandless demonstrates other tenets of transcendentalism as well, most notably the supremacy of the individual, by detaching himself from the mammon of this world. Another way he shows the supremacy of the individual, by the belief that one should not conform to the usual policies of life, causes him great trouble in some cases. As well as the belief that the individual supersedes all else, McCandless received much of his inspiration from nature. Finally, always following what he believes correct, McCandless follows his own intuition to the point of death. Chris McCandless not only shows his transcendentalist beliefs by the way he acts and thinks, but also by how these actions and thoughts emulate those of the fathers of transcendentalism, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In 1990, when he was 22 years old, Christopher McCandless ventured out into the Alaska wilderness in search for true happiness, and 2 years later he suffered a tragic death. An aspiring writer, Jon Krakauer, found McCandless’ story fascinating and chose to dedicate 3 years of his life to write a novel about him. The book entitled “Into the Wild” tells the tale of Christopher McCandless, an ill prepared transcendentalist longing for philosophical enrichment, who naïvely, failed to consider the dangers of isolating himself from human society for such a long period of time. Though Christopher McCandless made a courageous attempt to separate himself from society, in order to achieve self-fulfillment, the stubborn nature of this reckless greenhorn led him to his unfortunate demise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is known as the father of transcendentalism. Chris Mccandless, the protagonist of Into the Wild is known as one of major followers of transcendentalism. Chris and Emerson have many similarities. Both of their beliefs, and actions just shows how similar they are. It also shows in Emerson, and Chris’s writings that they are alike.Chris Mccandless and Ralph Waldo Emerson are similar in the way they see the importance of nature, how they tried to seek, to find their identity, and their views on independence.
Christopher McCandless was a hurt soul indeed. He used his knowledge of freedom and spirituality that he saw in author’s writings to take it out of context and explore the wilderness on his own. Seeking a way out of his unfortunate hardship in a dysfunctional family he set out to achieve living on his own within his own thoughts in the Alaskan wilderness. I believe that Chris McCandless was crazy, and he was somewhat unaware in the reality of his decisions. Chris was bright yet made bad decisions, he could make friends easily, but left impressions on them, and he didn’t know enough about living in the wild which would ultimately cause his death.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is known as the father of Transcendentalism, a philosophical movement based on feelings rather than logic, it is a movement for the nonconformists and unique thinkers. Transcendentalism’s main ideas are individualism, intuition, imagination, idealism, and inspiration. When Emerson created the movement in the nineteenth century he was a well known writer and is still today a prominent figure in American Literature. Christopher McCandless was also a transcendentalist. He left everything he had in order to go on a great Alaskan voyage. Unfortunately, during his journey, something went wrong and he died due to uncertain causes. McCandless is also the protagonist of the nonfiction novel, Into the Wild which Jon Krakauer wrote about McCandless’s life. Emerson and McCandless show similarities with each other such as their transcendental thinking, their individuality, and their life goal of searching for their identity.
Chris McCandless is regarded as being something as a spiritual figure almost as a cult hero, some call him a disillusioned fool, some call him a great adventurer, and the debate still continues. As Matthew Power calls in his article, an article where he tells the story of McCandless,“The debate falls into two camps: Krakauer's visionary seeker, the tragic hero who dared to live the unmediated life he had dreamed of and died trying; or, as many Alaskans see it, the unprepared fool, a greenhorn who had fundamentally misjudged the wilderness he'd wanted so desperately to commune with.” Like so many stories covering Christopher McCandless’ death, both ends of the argument are discussed in an unfavored manner in the hopes to help develop an opinion on the McCandless story. This open ended question can only be answered open-endedly based on what the readers base for themselves as covered stories intend. Like Power has done, ...
Chris’s mindset of living a very simplistic life is shown during his limited time with Jim Gallien. Jim notes that “Alex admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice” and “Alex’s cheap leather hiking boots were neither waterproof nor well insulated” (Krakauer, 5). Nevertheless, Chris lets his hubris get the best of him by failing to realize that he would need waterproof boots if he wanted to go into a snow environment. Chris was about to enter into the Alaskan frontier with an extremely lousy set of equipment. Chris lets his arrogance and the anticipation of the wild get the best of him, causing him to have poor judgment in his decisions on what to bring with him into the wild. His egotistic personality ultimately led to his death in the cold and unrelenting frontier. Nevertheless, this was not Chris’s first failed attempt to live a transcendentalist lifestyle. “Will you come pick me up?” McCandless asked (Krakauer, 54). Chris was unsuccessful in his endeavor to become a hobo and travel all the way to Seattle and live a life there. Not even a full two months passed before Chris realized that living a life in Seattle that was of transcendent origin, was not just hard, but impossible. This display of him being overly confident in his abilities to live on his own was a build up to him believing he was well
Transcendentalism is based on the belief that institutions in the society corrupt an individual’s purity. Transcendentalists believe that people are at their best when they are truly independent and self-reliant. They also believe that from independence and self-reliance, a true community is formed. Even though Transcendentalism is not recognized, it still exists in the modern society. Though not clearly outspoken as in Emerson and Thoreau’s times, many people in today’s society still have transcendental beliefs. Transcendental ideals are found in songs, films, books and other works such as media and advertisements. One example is the song “Get up, Stand up,” by Bob Marley, it is found to be influenced and has inspiration of transcendental elements such as Solitude (individuality), self-reliance, non-conformism (anti-institution), anti-materialism, nature and spirituality.
Before I started cheering, both of my parents never knew how much goes into being a cheerleader. Though soccer was the sport I grew up playing, I ended up quitting to try out for cheerleading in seventh grade. I made the squad that year and I immediately became attached to cheerleading, though my parents did not know how to react exactly. Of course they were happy for me since it was something that I wanted to do, but it was not soccer. My dad did not consider cheerleading to be a sport in the beginning, claiming that “there is no team quality to cheering.” It was safe to say that he did not necessarily like that I quit soccer to take up cheering since he did not consider cheerleading to be a real sport. I have learned that going against tradition and conformity is difficult, but is worth it in the end.
In today’s modern society, people tend to focus on material goods and follow the standards of social behavior. American writer Henry David Thoreau thought otherwise and left society to live in deliberate solitude in the woods for a couple years. Similar transcendentalist beliefs of Henry David Thoreau were shown through Chris McCandless’s journey in Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild. Chris McCandless decided to abandon his wealthy parents after graduating Emory University with honors. He donated all of his savings and left behind most of his material possessions. Much like Henry David Thoreau, Chris McCandless embarked into the Alaskan wilderness alone to live his new life in nature. Throughout his journey, Chris McCandless embodied transcendentalism
“Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance” is an idea in the essay “Self-Reliance” that encompasses nearly all of transcendentalism (Emerson 5). It means that, between all bodies of life, whether it be as small as a chemical bond or as large as a tree, there it a unity between their beings, regardless of their physical form. This divine unity is the essence of transcendentalism. The philosophy was formed by the poets and authors such as Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The term “transcendentalism” is brought up frequently in the discussion of Chris McCandless, the focus of the biography Into the Wild, written by Jon Krakauer. The exact reason for Chris’ decision to drop off the face of the Earth is unknown, but the circumstances of his life bring up mainly 2 different hypotheses: he was a revolutionary