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The relationship between humans and nature
The relationship between humans and nature
Essay on how to survive in the wilderness
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Nature is the opposite of mankind. It is often portrayed as a peaceful safe haven, nurturing life. Into the Wild and To Build a Fire, however, illustrate nature in a different light. They depict nature as an evil and unforgiving force.
Nature is very unforgiving. It enforces harsh consequences for mistakes and incompetence on people who do not know what they are doing. The man from To Build a Fire goes through great efforts when trying to build a fire in order to survive. He makes the mistake of building it by a tree with snow on its boughs. As a result of this, the snow on top “descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out!” The man is never able to build and sustain a fire on his trip and he perishes very uncomfortably. Chris McCandless from Into the Wild is not well versed in nature and survival skills. Yet, he is very confident as he enters the Alaskan wilderness. He packed very little and just went for it. Because of this, he is found dead with a note saying, “S.O.S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE…” He suffered from a sad, painful death. Both people suffer terribly as the
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outcome of their ineptitude and inability. Nature is evil.
Its conditions inflict pain and make it difficult to survive. Both Into the Wild and To Build a Fire take place in brutally cold environments that emphasize this notion. The man from To Build a fire had to “remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly gone numb.” After he died, his dog had “caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away”. This shows how cruel nature can be, how everyone is on their own. The dog, being part of nature, uses the man for his resources and leaves him when he is rendered useless. In Into the Wild, McCandless’ final resting place is hard to access and dangerous to trek- “the route was shortly rendered impassable by thawing permafrost and seasonal floods”. Nature is cruel and both stories seem to use this
idea. Nature is not as tranquil and warm as many make it to be. It is malicious and unkind to those who are not adept to it. Nature IS the opposite of mankind. Whether one is thought of with a positive or negative connotation, the other will always be the opposite.
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.
Chris McCandless was a young man who gave up his belongings to live in the wild away from society, and his journey was to find fulfillment and the meaning of life through nature. In the nonfiction book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer writes about the details of Chris McCandless’s journey to find and reinvent himself as he lives off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. Throughout the book, Krakauer portrays McCandless as a hero for rejecting society and falling victim to this bravery. However, Chris McCandless’s death is not an example of heroism and he did not fall victim to his courage. Instead, McCandless died as a result of ignorance and overconfidence that clouded his self-perception and ultimately led to his downfall.
In Into the Wild, the main character, Chris, embarks on a journey into the wilderness alone. He travels with minimal amounts of supplies and has no real plan for what he is doing. Like man in London’s story, Chris also received advice from wise and knowledgeable people who advised against traveling alone. They told him to be prepared not take any chances when it came to nature. However, Chris also ignored this advice and proceeded on with his wilderness journey. This produces the same result as in To Build a Fire, death. The interesting connection between these two stories is that Krakauer mentions Jack London as one of Chris’ favorite authors, giving him inspiration. Though this inspiration was most definitively negative because it caused Chris to embark on a disastrous trip into the
Life is a form of progress- from one stage to another, from one responsibility to another. Studying, getting good grades, and starting the family are common expectations of human life. In the novel Into the Wild, author Jon Krakauer introduced the tragic story of Christopher Johnson McCandless. After graduating from Emory University, McCandless sold of his possessions and ultimately became a wanderer. He hitchhiked to Alaska and walked into the wilderness for nearly 4 months. This journey to the 49th state proved fatal for him, and he lost his life while fulfilling his dream. After reading this novel, some readers admired the boy for his courage and noble ideas, while others fulminated that he was an idiot who perished out of arrogance and
We are living in the world where rules and laws have a significant role in controlling human behavior in the society. There are rules everywhere. Traffic laws help to protect drivers and pedestrians from accidents; syllabus helps to give students a set of rules that teacher expects from them. Nevertheless, a minority amount of people wish not to follow these rules because of its oppression and pressure on the desire to achieve their dream. “Into the Wild,” a book was written by Jon Krakauer, and “Grizzly Man,” a movie which was directed by Werner Herzog, are two non-fiction stories about the journey of men who walked away from constraints for an adventurous, unexpected way of living. Both of them were not pleased with how the
In Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction novel Into the Wild, the well off, upper-middle-class, Chris McCandless disappears, donating all of his savings to charity and hitchhiking to Alaska to live off the land, but 119 days later he is found having starved to death at the age of 24. Chris McCandless was and is a very heavily discussed topic due to the mysteries of how he died. His “Great American Odyssey” was short, but lack of divulging his plan to anyone else left it in a shroud of guesswork and minimal evidence. But despite that there is just enough evidence to show that Chris McCandless was for the most part, at fault for his own death. There is a strong claim, on the other hand, that McCandless’ death was attributed to a series of unfortunate events that were out of his control.
nature is not as in the plant and tree kind of nature, but on the nature of man at a
In “To Build A Fire”, the main conflict throughout is man versus nature although it would be inaccurate to say that nature goes out of its way to assault the man. The fact of the matter is, nature would be just as cold without the man's presence regardless of him being there .The environment as a whole is completely indifferent to the man, as it frequently is in naturalist literature. The bitter environment does not aid him in any way, and it will not notice if he perishes. In the same way, the dog does not care about the man, only about itself. Ironically enough though, as the man was dying he was getting upset toward the dog because of its natural warmth, the instincts that it had, and its survival skills and those were the elements that the man lacked for survival. It is ironic that the man had to die in order to find out that man's fragile body cannot survive in nature's harsh elements, regardless of a human’s natural over-confidence and psychological strength.
Throughout the Romanticism period, human’s connection with nature was explored as writers strove to find the benefits that humans receive through such interactions. Without such relationships, these authors found that certain aspects of life were missing or completely different. For example, certain authors found death a very frightening idea, but through the incorporation of man’s relationship with the natural world, readers find the immense utility that nature can potentially provide. Whether it’d be as solace, in the case of death, or as a place where one can find oneself in their own truest form, nature will nevertheless be a place where they themselves were derived from. Nature is where all humans originated,
Happiness: an idea so abstract and intangible that it requires one usually a lifetime to discover. Many quantify happiness to their monetary wealth, their materialistic empire, or time spent in relationships. However, others qualify happiness as a humble campaign to escape the squalor and dilapidation of oppressive societies, to educate oneself on the anatomy of the human soul, and to locate oneself in a world where being happy dissolves from a number to spiritual existence. Correspondingly, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Krakauer’s Into the Wild illuminate the struggles of contentment through protagonists which venture against norms in their dystopian or dissatisfying societies to find the virtuous refuge of happiness. Manifestly, societal
Chris McCandless was a fearless, charming, smart and determined boy. Into the wild explores the dauntless and rather dangerous lifestyle of Chris. Chris grew up in a well-off family who used their money to treat themselves to everyday luxuries. Chris was a conservative boy who set out to live in the wild, untamed Alaskan woods in March 1992, after being estranged from his parent for 2 years due to a rough patch in his fathers love life prior to, and during the marriage and life he lived with Chris, Chris’s sister, and their mom. Chris hitchhikes all the way to Alaska. Arriving on April 28, 1992 Chris walks “into the wild” Alaskan woods, not knowing he’ll never walk back out. Within 9 days of arriving Chris finds and lives in an old abonded bus. Later that day he writes after killing and eating a squirrel “fourth day famine”. A short 4 months pass, and Chris
In “To Build a Fire” and “The Interlopers”, the setting sets the conflict. In “To Build a Fire”, the setting is in an extremely cold environment, so the man is just trying to survive the cold. If it would have been a nice, warm environment, there would have been no conflict at all, and the man wouldn’t have froze to death. In “The Interlopers”, a tree falls on the two men and they are stuck with nowhere to go. In the same type of situation as the the man in “To Build a Fire”, if the tree wouldn’t have fallen on the two men, they wouldn’t have been killed by wolves. Both short stories have an important setting to them.
The short story “ To Build a Fire” and the excerpt from “Left for Dead” demonstrates naturalisms in many ways. For example the behavior of each character showed how deadly nature is. The unnamed man in ¨To Build a Fire” attitude towards nature was very ignorant. He didn't acknowledge how cold it was ultimately killing him. Since he didn't pay attention to nature he wasn't as prepared as much as he should have been. He only brought one meal making it very dangerous if he gets lost and needs to find more food. He didnt take the old man's advice and travel with a partner with such cold conditions. Also he could have wore more to keep warm and brought more supplies in case of an emergency. On the other hand Beck Weathers always noticed the dangers of nature. Beck Weathers loves hiking but he also does extensive research on the mountains he climbs. The reason why Beck was able to survive was because how well he knows nature. He was able to survive a storm that came out of nowhere on his own by climbing down to the last camp he was at and burrowing into the ground and using his coat to keep him warm. Beck was very prepared for the forces of nature with his jumpsuit and supplies which
In both texts the men are depicted as men who are full of pride. In “To Build a Fire” by Jack London the narrator speaks about his journey through the Yukon. Before his journey he was prompted by a wiser old man to never go through this trail on his own; that this was far too dangerous when the temperature was this cold. His pride leads him to ignore the older man’s words and travel the Yukon alone. This choice ended up to be one of the worst he would make and in the long run this prideful mindset is his downfall. His pride left him in the middle of the Yukon wet, freezing, and is unable to save his own life with no one there to depend on. In one paragraph he states "You were right, old hoss; you were right," although in these moments he finally saw that he is not always right it was far too late, he was destined to die and therefore he did ( TO BUILD A FIRE TEXT). In the criticism of this piece by Don D’Ammassa he stated something very similar to the views that have been expressed earlier “The nameless character in the revision is doomed by his own pride and foolishness, having learned his lesson far too late to benefit from it” (D'Ammassa 1). This sta...
To understand the nature-society relationship means that humans must also understand the benefits as well as problems that arise within the formation of this relationship. Nature as an essence and natural limits are just two of the ways in which this relationship can be broken down in order to further get an understanding of the ways nature and society both shape one another. These concepts provide useful approaches in defining what nature is and how individuals perceive and treat