You can read, you can sit for hours and think about what is the meaning of life what is my purpose of living. But you’ll never experience it if you don’t understand the beauty of life until you experience it yourself. Every person has their own beliefs, values, needs and desires and everyone has their own idea of what the meaning of life is. Many people have their own definition of happiness. McCandless wasn’t sure about what was his meaning of his life. He wanted to find himself, he wanted answers about who he really was deep inside him. Finding a meaning in his life was a challenge that McCandless wanted to approach. McCandless was living based on a set of moral values that influenced him to have a unique form to approach his goal. McCandless knew that he didn’t want his parents to dictate his life in that is really clear, because his parents were going to pay his career and his response to that was to donate the scholarship money he already had for collage. certainly …show more content…
Tolstoy was un of the largest influence on Chris because Tolstoy also abandon his life to pursuit of his own ideals and dreams, “I wanted movement and not calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quite life.” (Krakauer 15) Chris was shaped by the authors that he read about, the passion to living alone in the wilderness was influenced by Thoreau a man who believed that a man could come to find himself and a higher purpose by only living in the wilderness, his idea to go to Alaska came from London’s adventure stories. Each writer added some personal philosophies to Chris and by so he began to follow their examples and made it possible to get out of his comfort zone and began his own
Although some might argue that McCandless should have notified his parents that he was going to take this trip, however, if he would’ve told his family they would have gone out of their way to bring him back home. Furthermore Mccandless did tell his parents that he was going on this trip and didn’t find the need to tell them where he was going minute by minute. He was an adult and understood what the consequences were. Ever since Mccandless was a kid he was isolated, he felt that he didn’t belong in the world he lived in.
Although many may argue that McCandless past served as primary motivation for his adventure, there is more evidence showing that he had his own differential feelings and has a different act to his everyday decisions that were chosen for himself. Starting off, how Chris McCandless’s childhood life probably had an affect to him to his life choices when he went into the wild. Referring back to documentary how not only did he have spoken about his past, but his siblings did along with his parents about him to how he was and the decisions he made and how it impacted him as to if what he chose to do. He knew that some even his own family would put their own view about himself as being a selfish person because he was just doing what he wanted for
He does not view the world based on a piece of literature, or the voices of other, rather, he goes out and looks for the answer on his own. Chris reads transcendentalist writing, and those books inspire him to find his own meaning. He travels to Alaska, and he expects to have the same views and opinions as Emerson or Thoreau. However, he realizes that he did not agree with what he previously believes about being alone, and he understands what true happiness means to him, and it was not the same as those authors that he follows. Despite his different opinions, his realization works along with Emerson’s view in his Work Nature, “The foregoing generations beheld God and the nature face to face; we, through their eyes.
McCandless would do anything to figure out what the meaning of life was. “[He] wanted excitement and danger, and the chance to sacrifice [himself] for [his] love” (15) in order to know he was living his life. McCandless was the kind of person that would do something that could potentially kill him if he knew it could have a great outcome if nothing went wrong. McCandless wanted to experience life for all it had to offer. McCandless always did what he felt was right for him at the time, and he was the person to “[live] out his beliefs” (67) and would stop at nothing to do so.
Cyanne Hall Mrs. Quassy English 4P 22 February, 2016 Into the Wild Essay One day in July of 1990, Chris McCandless severed all contact with his family and set out West and started his two year long journey that would ultimately end with his untimely death in the frozen, unforgiving landscape of Alaska. McCandless was like us, the only difference, he went for his dreams. Although criticizers of Krakauer and McCandless believe Chris was mentally ill, McCandless suffered through emotional damage from family problems and was easily influenced in his vulnerable state through literature. How can someone throw away so much and want nothing in return except the wild? The more I read into McCandless the more I saw why the wild interested him
Chris McCandless was in his early 20’s, he was the kind of that guy that wanted to learn and experience life without all of the material things. He wanted to be independent from his parents and friends so Chris did something that would be insane for most of us humans but to him, it wasn’t. He went into the wild of Alaska for months, in fact, McCandless even thought he could make it out alive at the end of his journey. As a matter of fact, he was known as being a risk taker and enjoyed being out and about in the nature side of the world. Many would believe that Chris McCandless went into the wild to purposely kill himself; however, I myself believe that McCandless did not do it purposely.
He urged adults to see the world through the way a child would adore it, in a purer loving way. This goes against many Americans’ viewpoints on life, then and even now. He also mentions that he believes nature is a kind force to everyone, and is never cruel. On the other hand, Chris McCandless’s life is documented by the book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. Within the book, Chris’s past is documented by his inability to conform.
Chris was inspired by authors of the transcendentalist type, and writers depicting life in the wild. Krakauer addresses a key point in saying that “he [Chris] seemed to forget they were words of fiction…” (page 36) when referring to fictional books such as Call of the Wild. His obsession with the idealized works of fiction represents Chris’s distracting fantasies that are a defined part of cognitive avoidance. Combining protective avoidance with cognitive avoidance, Chris stays firm in his belief that he is well-prepared enough and knowledgeable enough to survive in Alaska. This belief persists despite multiple warnings made by more experienced individuals, regarding the Alaskan bush.
Everyone sets their goals at different expectations than others which is why you typically don’t go for the same goal as other people. The adventure that McCandless went on was dangerous, but it fit his expectation to be independent and to find where he belongs. McCandless valued self-reliance ,he needed to be his own person, with his own vision and way of thinking so that others wouldnt influence him along the way. He recognized that the only way for him to find his own truth would to be self-centered and focus on his own being first, without others clouding his sense of
In the short story, “Death of an Innocent” by Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless travels into the Alaskan wilderness with the intention of relying completely on himself. In the true spirit of transcendentalism, McCandless travels to escape the bounds of society and to remove himself from a materialistic world. Many argue, however, that Chris McCandless was not a transcendentalist because he travels to exotic lands as a means of avoidance, but actually, Chris McCandless is the epitome of a transcendentalist. Transcendentalists, however, rely on themselves and nature to survive and do not depend on material items. Transcendentalists romanticize individualism and believe that intuition is the best guide through life.
McCandless’s whole reason for his actions was how he was sick of reality. He wanted to experience a life without materialistic things like money and possessions. He knew that in order to live a life without responsibility, he had to leave everything behind including his family. In the chapter “The Stampede Trail” a friend of McCandless, Andy Horowitz, said that
What really drove Chris McCandless into the wild? I believe the top three of the countless reasons that drove McCandless into the wild was the emotional damage from his parents, rebellion of the youth & risk taking tendencies, and his hubris and detestation against authority and/or someone telling him what to do. Some may believe that Chris McCandless went into the wild because of his literary heroes Leo Tolstoy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau , and Jack London but the real reason he left everything was because of those reasons. In this essay I will elaborate on why I believe those are the reasons that drove McCandless into the wild.
If he were living normally, he would most likely become bored and depressed. In a letter to his brother, McCandless writes, “I know that I could not bear the routine and humdrum of the life that you are forced to lead. I don’t think I could ever settle down. I have known too much of the depths of live already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax” (Krakauer 87). This means that McCandless would rather live an exciting life and would hate to live a normal one.
Christopher McCandless, the protagonist of the novel and film Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, is not your average guy. Driven by his minimalist ideals and hate for society, he challenged the status quo and embarked on a journey that eventually lead to his unforeseen demise. A tragic hero, defined by esteemed writer, Arthur Miller, is a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on tragedy. Christopher McCandless fulfills the role of Miller’s tragic hero due to the fact that his tragic flaw of minimalism and aversion towards society had lead him to his death.
The meaning of life is whatever we choose it to be. We are in control of given our life meaning, it 's all a matter of perspective. If you decided you want to live your life a certain way and that way makes you happy, then you 're given your life meaning. The meaning of life to me is just to live a healthy, happy, honest lifestyle.