With a wish to forsake industrial living Edward Abby of Desert Solitaire, and Chris McCandless of Into the Wild, immerse themselves in wilderness. While rejecting notions of industrial life, their defection is not absolute. Despite McCandless’ stated wish to live off the land (Krakauer163), he delights in finding an industrial bus in the Alaskan wilderness for his base camp (Krakauer163). Likewise Abbey, from his comfortable trailer in the Utah desert, states he is there to “confront…the bare bones of existence” (6). Utilization of industry in their escape from it seems like a contradiction at first glance, but this conflict indicates that they are not rejecting industry, only separating themselves by the degrees necessary to accommodate what they want to experience. Abbey’s Industrial dependency accommodates his need to have a philosophical dialogue with nature without separating himself from it, while McCandless’ primitive approach accommodates his need for self-reliance. This separation by degrees allows rejection and usage to co-exist within their individual paradigms. The removal of absolutes allows both men to explore outside of defined parameters. Subscribing to neither total rejection of a notion, nor adherence to rigidly defined ideas, both men can incorporate evolving discoveries relative to their need without contradiction.
Abbey and McCandless experience different degrees of separation from industrial living, but neither wholly rejects it. Abbey, a National Park Service employee in Utah, states “I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront immediately and directly if it’s possible, the bare bones of existence” (6). While Abbey surround...
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...f the natural” (Abbey 6) then proceeds to personify everything around him from ravens that “croak harsh clanking sounds of smug satisfaction” (Abbey 16), to a Juniper tree that might be mad, or simply suffering “an internal effort at liberation” (Abbey 27). While Abbey explores the contradiction of man and nature merged, yet separate, McCandless frequently re-shapes his paradigm to incorporate discovery. Non-adherence to predetermined configurations allows both men to have the relationships they seek with wilderness and industrial society. We see on close inspection that what at first appears to be a contradiction is actually a purposeful non-conformity that allows each man to tailor his experience.
Works Cited
1. Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968. Print.
2. Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: DOUBLEDAY, 1997. Print.
This anthropocentric theme continues throughout his narrative but is personified on a societal level. This matter is first introduced in the chapter “Polemic: Industrial Tourism and The National Parks.” In this chapter Abbey notes the expansionist nature of the industrial economy and how it is affecting the national parks. Abbey critiques arguments for uni...
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Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey is a collection of autobiographical excerpts depicting Abbey's experiences as a park ranger of Arches National Monument in 1956 and 1957. In the chapter, Water, Abbey discusses how the ecosystem and habitats adapt to the arid and barren weather of the Southwest over time. In addition, he explains that the streams, riverbeds and other means of water end up finding their own ways to support their ecosystem's struggling animal and plant life. Abbey also explores different and unusual means of water such as flash floods and quicksand. Furthermore, Abbey contrasts how the environment adapts naturally to very low water conditions with how human demands to expand outside water sources to attract more civilians and
As the sweltering, hot sun signified the start of a scorching afternoon, a young boy lay in the fields harvesting vegetables for another family. He had been enslaved to perform chores around the house for the family, and was only given very few privileges. While his stomach throbbed with pangs of hunger, he continued cooking meals for them. After the family indulged in the cozy heat from the fireplace, he was the one to clean the ashes. Despite his whole body feeling sore from all the rigorous work he completed, the young boy had been left alone to suffer. As months passed by, he desired independence. He wanted to cook his own food, make his own fire, harvest his own plants and earn money. The lad soon discovered that he needed faith and courage to break away from his restricted environment. When put in a suppressive situation, every person has the aspiration to escape the injustice. This is what Harrison Bergeron and Sanger Rainsford do to liberate themselves from the external forces that govern their lives. Harrison, the main character of “Harrison Bergeron” written by Kurt Vonnegut, is a strong, fourteen year old boy whose talents have been concealed by the government. Growing up in an environment where equality has restricted people’s thinking, Harrison endeavors to change society’s views. Rainsford, the main character of “The Most Dangerous Game” written by Richard Connell, is a skilled hunter who believes that animals were made to be hunted; he has no sympathy for them. Stranded on island with a killer chasing him, he learns to make rational choices. While both Harrison and Ranisford are courageous characters, Rainsford’s prudence enables him to overpower his enemy, whereas Harrison’s impulsive nature results in him being ...
Within many people, there lies a fascination that cannot be quenched unless people explore it to their hearts’ content. This zealotry devours the mind, leaving behind a maddening obsession that takes complete control. In Jon Krakauer's nonfiction work, Into the Wild, the main character, Chris McCandless, displays such a yearning as he travels to Alaska’s countryside, ignoring the advice of others, obsessively seeking to free himself from the chains that hold a materialistic world center. McCandless exists as a zealot searching for the wilderness, fanatically pursuing its fruits of spirituality and blessings of liberty.
Nature for McCandless was something he knew very well, for he had been since he was small, always wanting to climb higher. When at home, he felt trapped and the wild served as a cleansing power for him. When arriving to alaska, McCandless wrote a declaration of independence, as Krakauer puts it, writing “Ultimate freedom. . . . Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return , ‘cause ‘the west is the best’”(163). McCandless felt like he had no home,so he made nature his own. Similarly, Thoreau explains, “i found myself suddenly neighbors to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them . . . to those smaller and more thrilling songsters of the forest”(9). Thoreau cherished nature and the endless possibilities it contained. Likewise, Thoreau 's house was a place in which he “did not need to go outdoors to take the air for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness”(9) This allowed Thoreau stay in touch with the wilderness without feeling captive in his own home. Both Thoreau and McCandless were attracted by nature and the clarity, freedom can bring to one’s
Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, describes the adventure of Christopher McCandless, a young man that ventured into the wilderness of Alaska hoping to find himself and the meaning of life. He undergoes his dangerous journey because he was persuade by of writers like Henry D. Thoreau, who believe it is was best to get farther away from the mainstreams of life. McCandless’ wild adventure was supposed to lead him towards personal growth but instead resulted in his death caused by his unpreparedness towards the atrocity nature.
Born in Home, Pennsylvania in 1927, Abbey worked as a forest ranger and fire look-out for the National Forest Service after graduating from the University of New Mexico. An author of numerous essays and novels, he died in 1989 leaving behind a legacy of popular environmental literature. His credibility as a forest ranger, fire look- out, and graduate of the University of New Mexico lend credibility to his knowledge of America’s wilderness and deserts. Readers develop the sense that Abbey has invested both time and emotion in the vast deserts of America.
Through journal entries, highlighted passages, stories of people’s encounters, and personal experiences, author Jon Krakauer attempts to reconstruct the life of a young transcendentalist man named Chris Johnson McCandless in the biographical novel Into the Wild. McCandless was a 24-year-old young man who completely severed his connection to the world, his family, and all of his tangible possessions in hope to survive off the land in Alaska. In the two years that led to his Alaskan Odyssey McCandless created a new life for himself and lived by the name Alexander Supertramp, in hope to leave his old life behind. Krakauer starts his novel “Into the Wild” by bluntly revealing to the audience that he had only survived 113 days and his remains were found two weeks after preceding his death. Rather than focusing on McCandless death, Krakauer focused on his life. Although Krakauer is biased, he proves to be a credible biographer and proves the assertions he made in his authors note.
In Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer explores the human fascination with the purpose of life and nature. Krakauer documents the life and death of Chris McCandless, a young man that embarked on an Odyssey in the Alaskan wilderness. Like many people, McCandless believed that he could give his life meaning by pursuing a relationship with nature. He also believed that rejecting human relationships, abandoning his materialistic ways, and purchasing a book about wildlife would strengthen his relationship with nature. However, after spending several months enduring the extreme conditions of the Alaskan wilderness, McCandless’ beliefs begin to work against him. He then accepts that he needs humans, cannot escape materialism, and can never fully understand how nature functions. Most importantly, he realizes that human relationships are more valuable than infinite solitude. McCandless’ gradual change of heart demonstrates that exploring the wilderness is a transformative experience. Krakauer uses the life and death of Chris McCandless to convey that humans need to explore nature in order to discover the meaning of life.
Through the ingenious works of poetry the role of nature has imprinted the 18th and 19th century with a mark of significance. The common terminology ‘nature’ has been reflected by our greatest poets in different meanings and understanding; Alexander Pope believed in reason and moderation, whereas Blake and Wordsworth embraced passion and imagination.
In William Wordsworth’s poems, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and pivotal r ole within them. To Wordsworth’s poetry, interacting with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey, and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an everlasting- individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth, himself, a sense of console. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary elements of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, looking at the world as a soothing being of which he is a part of, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divinity aspects behind them. For Wordsworth, the world itself, in all its glory, can be a place of suffering, which surely occurs within the world; Wordsworth is still comforted with the belief that all things happen by the hands of the divinity and the just and divine order of nature, itself.