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Literature essay in English
Literature essay in English
Literature essay in English
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Imagine your first home. The place where you lived right after you were born. Where you took your first steps, and where you said your words. This place is closely attached to your heart and you cherish it despite the hardships you may or may not have had there. You love this place and everything in it. Now imagine leaving this place. Just up and leaving everything behind. Family friends, basically the proof of your existence. You just cut the ties to the life that binds you so you can go live in the wilderness. Even if you have a reason, is it possible to do without a thought of going back before you truly leave, apparently so. Christopher McCandless a young man fresh out of college did exactly this without a second thought. He left his home, his comfort zone, just so he could challenge himself. He wanted to live free of societies rules, so he left. What kind of man would do this? An ordinary man, who was so selfish he idiotically left his family . McCandless is seen in different ways because of his decision to leave his family. One of many that voiced their opinion of McCandless...
their son was still living. McCandless was hubristic and this was shown when he rejected help
McCandless was different to other people, Westerburg saw this, explaining how McCandless ”tried too hard to make sense of the world. To figure out why people were bad to each other so often”(18). When McCandless originally left, he had felt betrayed by his parents and in college he slowly started pushing his friends away. He was disgusted by all the lies and began to shut down and came the plan to leave in his Datsun. Anybody else in his place would have decided to take charge and take a decisive turn turn in their life, hoping it would be for the better. Many don 't realize that although the beginning he was escaping, he later preferred living in nature and didn 't want to stop. He said it himself in a letter “ The freedom and simple beauty of it is just too good to pass up”(33). Also, in McCandless story you’re able to see the evolution of McCandless mentality. At first, he is alone trying to cope with the setbacks he encounters, in which he almost dies from. Then, needing to recharge, he makes friends like Franz and the Westerburg that allow him to see the positives of having someone there for you. However, he still was not convinced that human relationships were necessary, he keeps a safe distance sending them postcards when he can. It is not until at Alaska that McCandless discovers what happiness consists of, he writes in bold letters, “Happiness only
McCandless was not the 'sit down and take it in stride' kind of person. If he saw something wrong, something he did not agree with, he would try to fix it, or help in any way that he could. He was inherently compassionate, a man of his principles; owned by the rules that he governed himself with. It is apparent that he had always been an idealistic dreamer, and had always believed himself capable of much, because as his friend shared: “He'd say 'Come on,...
McCandless didn’t fit into the society or the wilderness by the way his personality always
To begin with, McCandless’s decision to walk into the wild was acceptable because he wanted to become an inspiration and an individual. Emerson states, “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance: that imitation is suicide” (Emerson). Chris McCandless left to shun the conformist society that he could feel changing him. Chris wanted the chains that bound him to be broken. Society takes the individual and locks it up and destroys it. According to Emerson, “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion: it is easy to in solitude to live after our own: but the great man is he who in the midst of the crow keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude” (Emerson). McCandless left his materialistic family to be his own person ad to be unique. The world’s opinion does not make the man wh...
Krakauer states, “McCandless was thrilled to be on his way north, and he was relieved as well-relieved that he had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it” (55). This had also occurred a few months prior in Niland Slabs, where he met Burres and Tracy. He had made friends there, and Tracy had developed feelings for him, but he rebuffed any of her advancements; he didn’t want to get involved with others, not after having left home for his journey. To him, having had friends and family that he left behind, he loved people, but he didn’t want to be close to them in any way other than purely being around them. Growing up with a difficult family relationship, such as McCandles’s, which caused him to push people away; it’s easy to relate to him in that aspect.
For many years I would pass by the house and long to stop and look at it. One day I realized that the house was just that, a house. While it served as a physical reminder of my childhood, the actual memories and experiences I had growing up there were what mattered, and they would stay with me forever.
McCandless enjoyed a life of privilege that many can only yearn for. His parents and sister demonstrated extreme care and concern upon his disappearance. They even went to the extent of hiring private investigators to search for their lost relative. Prior to this, they made multiple attempts to get in touch with him, including a personal visit to his residence and countless pieces of mail. By returning several unopened letters to them, he demonstrated a severe lack of respect and reverence for the people that did so much for him. Many can only aspire to have such a stable home life, and his actions constituted an insult to the privilege that he had
Explorers are always pushed to their limits. Their motivation varies but also shows their human ability. Great journeys are from the motivation from within and are either made or broken. Many have tried and many have failed but it is what you bring from it that really matters. In Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer states that exploring nature brings personal awareness.
Growing up in a big family has taught me so many things... One, to never take things for granted and two, you always have someone to rely on and always have fun with. Being the youngest sibling and youngest cousin, i’ve gotten to hear so many of their life changing experiences, and the one that has had the biggest impact is TWB. My older cousin Whitney Miller went on TWB in 2001 where she met her husband John Miller. My other cousin Zach went in 2008, and my uncle John Ellington was counselor for 2 years. Getting to hear the different stories and perspectives of their journey on TWB has made me wish to have the life changing experiences they still continue to talk about. I go to school at Community School of Davidson and I have since kindergarten.
Another apartment, two or three stories high. The floor plan was open and snow would frost the edge of the balcony as we looked out. I remember walking outside into crisp clean cold air and throwing snow up in the air just waiting for it to sprinkle its softness on my raspberry-pink coat. I remember decorating our Christmas tree with the same size and shape multicolored ornaments and multi colored lights that I would manage to break. It is one of my fondest memories, because everything felt cozy and familiar, a true home. Not for long, however. You probably saw it coming, we moved to Jersey City, NJ. Two houses this time. The house on Erie Street, a stone’s throw away from the corner shop, was a little rectangle home on the outside, and looked like an Ikea home on the inside. I remember feeling the floor rumble as the landlord had his frequent parties with music as loud as a jet engine, and I remember feeling the floor slip from under my feet as my dad would chase me around the
McCandless was a fearless human being. I think that most of the people’s ideologies and personalities have to do with how they were raised by the parents and everything that was taught to them. When a lack of love exists from a parent towards his child, a hate can be created without knowing it. McCandless could have gone away from society to escape reality or, for being in a place where he could find himself at peace. Either one, we can assume that he obviously had different ideas about civilization; the idea of having a life full of danger and adventure inspired and excited him.
One of the wisest things that I have ever done for myself is to move away from home. After high school graduation, I had decided to take a year off and stay home because at that time in my life I truly felt that I was not fit for university and that I needed time to work on myself. What I did end up finding is that a lot of the people that stayed behind, including myself, began to get into extremely destructive habits. As a lot of us did not have any concrete goals in our lives, we found that a sense of freedom became too much for us to handle. This resulted in many of us finding ourselves to push our limits with drugs and alcohol, as we were surrounded with freedom and were too immature to know how to handle it. I started to realize that the
He ran barefoot in the darkness digging his soles into the soft grainy sand. It was pitch black, not even the Moon lit his pathway. His breath came in short sharp bursts matching his steps. The path he knew by memory got steeper, the deeper his feet dug into the shifting sands. Pebbles now embedded themselves into his feet, he altered his footing until the relief of sand which felt like a mother’s caress. He needed to run faster for they were behind him, he knew he hadn’t long as he heard the noise of the engines behind him. The convoy was behind him, gaining speed like a pride of lionesses on the hunt for their prey, he was half running, half scrambling over unseen obstacles rushing away faster than OJ’s white bronco. He dove into the clump
grandmother’s house because it made me feel safe and warm. There was a smell of