Although a journey about leaving home to pursue an ideal world may be tough for many people to relate to, it certainly makes for a thrilling tale. In these stories, Siddhartha and Into the Wild, the audiences are entertained by two parallel adventures of leaving home and seeking fulfillment. However, despite the similarities these stories contain, they are different in several respects. While Chris McCandless has set his journey on a final location of Alaska, Siddhartha seeks no specific earthly location, but rather anywhere that will allow him to realize his vision of nirvana. Chris looks for a physical escape from society, but Siddharta seeks a mental world that would allow him to escape the daily trivialities and minutiae of a normal life. …show more content…
Siddhartha realizes he is no longer comfortable just sitting around as the big fish in a little pond, and he would like to seek true illumination that he feels cannot be found in their town. As he states to his father, “I have come to tell you that I wish to leave your house tomorrow and join the ascetics.” (Hess, p. 10). In other words, he decides to break away from his childhood village and pursue enlightenment by practicing self-discipline (becoming an ascetic). Although he tries to reach nirvana in numerous different manners, his final goal never truly changes. While Siddhartha eventually obtains his sense of enlightenment by realizing how he can best mentally escape the everyday struggle of society, Chris is unable to do so. Despite his efforts being aimed primarily at getting to Alaska, as he tells the majority of people he meets, he realizes in his final days that his true enlightenment came with the people he encounters and interacts with and he could only appreciate it after spending months in isolation. As he wrote in his copy of Doctor Zhivago, “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.” And despite realizing what truly gave him inner peace, his myopic attitude is eventually what took his life and any possibility of achieving his form of enlightenment through shared happiness. An underlying theme of both books is how suffering can transform our
Siddhartha always had a clear goal, a clear path. He had an idea of how he was going to achieve his goal right from the start, this helps his journey meet a positive end. McCandless never really had a clear idea of what he was trying to achieve. In the end it can be said that these stories compliment one another in a sense that reading McCandless’ story really brings a relatability to Siddhartha that it didn't have before. Into the wild really pulls Siddartha into modern terms and you realize that both characters really had the same goal in mind: to escape the constraints of materialism and worldly desires in search of a greater understanding of true
Siddhartha then realizes this is not the journey he should be taking and so he goes to live in the city and become wealthy. The motivation for this is because
Quote: “That is why I am going on my way-not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone-or die. Analysis: In this chapter, Siddhartha and Govinda meet the Buddha and listen to his teachings. Siddhartha appreciated the teachings and knew Buddha’s teachings were the greatest of any man. The Buddha had reached Enlightenment was radiated peace.
There are many people in the world that have made a difference. Every person alive, that has been alive, and will be born, will have an effect on the world in one way or another. Two people that have affected the world are Mahatma Gandhi, an Indian antiwar activist, and Chris McCandless, from the true novel Into the Wild. These two may have affected the world differently, but when their actions and stories are put together, a whole is created.
"Seemed like a kid who was looking for something, looking for something, just didn't know what it was" (Krakauer 42). As an individual Chris McCandless was looking for himself. In the non-fiction book Into The Wild written by Jon Krakauer, it talks about the spiritual journey Chris made to the Alaskan wilderness, alone. There comes a time in everyones lives when a person realizes the satisfaction in ones life is mediocre, when that person realizes they want something more. The community Chris was raised in often set guidelines that limited his freedom.
Part of growing up is leaving your parents and determining what is best for yourself instead of listening to what others think is best for you. In both Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and the movie Dead Poets Society we were introduced to characters who were beginning to make these steps in life; Siddhartha himself, and Neil Perry. While each character had many differences, they both faced the same problem, their fathers had set out a plan for their lives that they would follow no matter what was for their best interest. These plans not only were nothing similar to what the boys wanted in life, but led to each of them turning against their parents wishes. The decision to disobey their family’s wishes led both Neil Perry and Siddhartha to find what truly made them happy in life.
Siddhartha discovers his inner peace when he goes through diverse experiences, and gains wisdom. As a young kid, Siddhartha grows up being a Brahmin’s son. His father and elders taught Siddhartha
Into the Wild; the Realist Account of a Transcendentalist’s Story Into the Wild is a realist work of literature that tells the tale of Chris McCandless, a man who lived his life in accordance with transcendentalist philosophy. The novel itself, Into the Wild, can be classified as a realist work, for its honest and truthful portrayal of one man's life. It includes both the good and the bad, with candor and simplicity. In its pages is the telling of Chris McCandless’s life, and adventure. It reveals that McCandless is a transcendentalist, who rejected the typical societal life for one that revered self reliance, nature, and human connections.
Siddhartha was confident he would find his true desire. Along with this journey, Siddhartha encounters many people/groups who try to teach him enlightenment, but he did not realize the suffering that would go along with this trip. As the
Each individual embarks on his or her own hero’s journey in life, some finding peace and enlightenment while others suffer greatly. In Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, the author slowly shows Siddhartha’s path towards finding the self and enlightenment through conflict and resolution. Finding himself is difficult, but once he does, Siddhartha is released from sorrow and depression, which finally enables him to reach enlightenment and peace. Hesse portrays Siddhartha’s spiritual hero’s journey by using unique conflicts to reveal his true self through independence, mindfulness, and responsibility.
“So many people live in unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation” (57). Chris McCandless was determined to not be one of those men, he strived for a life in solitude, away from the demands of society. For that reason he went on an epic transcendental experience that took him from Mexico to Alaska. Along the way, he met and made an impact on peoples’ lives, people like Wayne Westenberg and Ronald Franz. Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild discusses Chris’s journey, and makes the reader question Chris’s reasons for going out into the wild.
The story of Siddhartha tells the tale of a boy who grows up in a wealthy Brahman family. He grows to be intelligent and handsome and is loved by all his family and friends. Siddhartha seems to have everything he could want but eventually becomes frustrated with his life. He seeks enlightenment and believes that the elders in his community have nothing more to teach him spiritually. Much to his parent’s frustration, Siddhartha decides he needs to leave home and find the inner peace he seeks.
Siddhartha finds spiritual enlightenment through his journey in which he encounters his enlightening events through stages in life he undergoes. The start of Siddhartha’s journey begins at home where he mentions to his best friend, Govinda, that he will join the Samanas who believe that they can reach enlightenment through the rejection of physical desire. Siddhartha seems to feel empty inside, lost in his own thoughts, full of wise knowledge he had learned, and for that matter “Govinda realized from the first glance at his friend’s determined face that now it was beginning. Siddhartha was going his own way; his destiny was beginning to unfold itself…” (Hesse 6).
Once Siddhartha learns about the harmony of the river, he begins to be listen more carefully and lets go of all his desires. “More ego than before, more concentrated” (39). With a world filled with desires of wealth, clothes, ranking in society, and ego, it is easy to worship these wants instead of focusing on what is actually important in life. Therefore, even though Siddhartha once desired material wealth, by listening to the river and opening his eyes to the beauty of the world, makes him let go of his desires. In addition, by letting go, he was able to experience the truth.
Siddhartha's journey searching for Enlightenment mostly intersects with the third ambition which is the aspiration for the world beyond. In his strive to find Enlightenment, Siddhartha believes that his teachings from the elder Brahmins would not lead to his objective because he hasn’t found peace with his current knowledge. This sparks his aspiration to find the world beyond which is Nirvana. He leaves and starts his journey in the search for Enlightenment with the Samanas. Siddhartha’s approach to reaching Enlightenment, the world beyond, was to let go of his sense of self and evidently become empty with no desires.