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Examples Of Transcendentalism In Into The Wild

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Oscar Wilde once said, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Wilde’s quote is describing, in whole, the laborious idea of transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is a simple way of living life that promotes reducing the dependence on property, self expression, and the goodness of human and respect for other beauty. Starring in the book Into the Wild, Chris McCandless shows many examples of transcendentalism through his simple lifestyle. Chris McCandless was a hitchhiker who enjoyed living on the road. He loved watching nature, exploring, and living in peace away from society and the government. On page thirty six of Into the Wild, Krakauer, the author, stated that McCandless burned all of his money. He had …show more content…

Westerburg was worried about McCandless. The trip would be long and cold, and McCandless would hitchhike the whole way. Westerberg eventually offered to buy McCandless a plane ticket to Fairbanks, but he would not take it. McCandless said that taking a plane would be “cheating”. McCandless had a challenge and a goal for himself, and he was going to do whatever it took to achieve it. He wanted to accomplish it alone, without the help of others. By not accepting Westerberg's offer, McCandless was reducing his dependence on property. He had the chance to ride a plane to Alaska, which would greatly shorten his journey North, but he did not take it. His actions relate to the essay “Walden”, also written by Henry David Thoreau. In “Walden”, Thoreau speaks of his life on Walden Pond. On page 410, he states, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” When Thoreau made the decision to explore the woods by Walden Pond, he was reducing his dependence on property, just as

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