A Soon to Be Transcendentalist What is a transcendentalist? How is Chris “Alexander” McCandless a “true” transcendentalist? A transcendentalist is someone who believes in a philosophy that consists of being a non-conformist, being one with nature, and rejecting materialism. Throughout Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild, it just occurs that McCandless achieves all of the above.
Nature Is Real Life Society could stress us with fake desires but, “In the woods, we return to reason and faith.” (Emerson 243) In the book, Into the Wild, John Krakauer documents Chris McCandless, fighting to find truth in the nature away from society. Ralph Waldo Emerson's views of finding truth in nature include leaving society, noticing life around yourself, and understanding that nature is filled with truth. Chris McCandless is driven by the transcendentalist ideal of finding self-truth in nature.
Henry David Thoreau, Jon Krakauer, and Chris McCandless embrace Transcendentalism. Mainly Chris’ and Thoreau’s belief about it. Both try to find themselves and the adventure of nature. In Into the Wild, Krakauer has the same beliefs as Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau want to find themselves, especially in nature. The first comment of transcendental beliefs is Chris McCandless was finding himself.
Into the Wild Chris McCandless. Who is he? I guess you could say he is the pure definition of a “transcendentalist”. A transcendentalist is a person who lives a completely different type of lifestyle than your average person, they believe in self reliance, they will always have a strong connection with mother nature, they’re individualists, and always searching for the meaning of life. McCandless went on a journey that no normal american would have thought was sane.
The book, Into The Wild, provides the most popular and detailed outline of Chris McCandless’ adventures. Through the examination of this book, it can be seen that Chris McCandless is a transcendentalist. A transcendentalist is a person who seeks to find their relation to the universe through a direct relationship with God and nature and believes in the tenets of transcendentalism. The validity of McCandless being a transcendentalist can be seen in his time in the Detrital Valley. In addition to examining whether McCandless is a transcendentalist, it is helpful to self-reflect and determine if I am a transcendentalist.
Chris McCandless was a young and adventurous man, and at age twenty two, he set out to travel on his own in the American wilderness with only a ten pound bag of rice, a plant guide, a rifle with ammunition, and a camera. There’s much debate about this boy and his character, but a frequently asked question is whether he really embodied transcendentalism or if he was just a priveleged boy on an unprepared and reckless mission. Throughout Into the Wild, a nonfiction book by Jon Krakauer, his actions and reasoning are revealed through his adventures and thoughts. By the time Krakauer's journalistic exploration is over, McCandless is proven to just be a man who follows many transcendentalist influences. Chris McCandless grew up disagreeing with
"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.”- Henry David Thoreau. Transcendentalism is an American philosophy that revolves around self-reliance and independence, commonly in nature, a Transcendentalist wants to find the true meaning in life. I believe that Chris McCandless was a Transcendentalist because he was able to leave his whole life behind and take on a minimalist lifestyle while having a strong relationship with god. However, I believe that I am not a Transcendentalist, but simply an adventurer.
“We need the tonic of wildness... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because it is unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature” -Henry David Thoreau, Walden. In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, a biographical account of Chris McCandless’s life, after graduating from college, 22-year-old McCandless decides to cut all ties from his family and hitchhike across America and live as simply as possible.
“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.
Kevin Sun Mrs. Cohen English 2CP --D February 22, 2018 Another Perspective The film Into the Wild is based on the life of Chris McCandless, a young man who rejected the consumerist society of America in order to live a more simple life. Through his travels, Chris carried essays by Transcendentalist philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, suggesting that McCandless is impacted by Transcendentalist ideals. Two key tenets of Transcendentalism that clearly influenced McCandless’ choices are the value of simplicity and the importance of self-reliance.
Was Chris McCandless a true transcendentalist? Transcendentalism is a system developed by Immanuel Kant, based on the idea that, in order to understand the nature of reality, one must first examine and analyze the reasoning process that governs the nature of experience. Influenced by romanticism, Platonism, and Kantian philosophy, it taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity, and its members held progressive views on feminism and communal living. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were central figures. In Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild, McCandless is viewed as a transcendentalist.
In Emerson's views, people should “not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”(citation). Based on Emerson’s thoughts, people should not follow the crowd, but instead live their lives and leave their mark on the Earth. Emerson thoughts come from a philosophical movement of the nineteenth century called transcendentalism. Transcendentalism focuses on religious renewal, literary innovation, and social transformation (encyclopedia.com). Because of their belief that God exists in everyone and nature, and that knowledge comes from individual intuition, led to the highlight of individualism, self-reliance, and breaking free from traditions(citation).
The transcendentalism time period is described as a time that stressed equality, social responsibility, and the power of the individual. Although this time period had many influential authors, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were two of the most influential writers of this era. Throughout both Self Reliance, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Civil Disobedience, written by Henry David Thoreau, the lesson of non-conformity to society and the idea that it is each person’s social responsibility to stand up for themselves is discussed. One of Emerson’s main goal of Self Reliance was wanting to explain an important idea of individuality and that humans should not conform to the societal views that were being forced upon them and that
Transcendentalism is the belief that man is inherently good, is an independent thinker, and goes out into nature to get in touch with himself. Generally, man has good intentions and intends no harm unto others. In addition, man does not need society to give him and develop his thoughts, as he already has them within. To help bring out these already installed beliefs, man has the desire to go out into nature to get in touch with himself and find deeper notions within. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings “Self Reliance” and “American Scholar”, he writes about how being a true individual means that one must have his own beliefs, and not copy someone else’s ideas.
People consider Emerson the “father of Transcendentalism”. He believed that man would thrive if he trusted himself. Man was inherently good and could do no wrong. In Emerson’s “Nature”, a work about Emerson’s view on nature, he writes: “We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy” (Emerson Par 2). Man did not need to rely on society, or entangle himself in the patterns of the world; man’s intuition would be enough for his success.
