Societal Transcendentalism In The Life Of Chris Mccandless

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Some people, extremely rare as it is, live their lives in a genuine way while showing who they really are. Others build images in their heads of who they want to be and how they want to be depicted. They embody that image, but deep inside it’s not who they really are. There are moments in those people’s lives where their true self comes out, and it ends up contradicting everything they tried so hard to be. Chris McCandless lived towards the latter lifestyle, having an image of himself in his head which wasn’t really who he was. He came off as this anti-societal transcendentalist, but he was actually drawn to societal qualities. He claimed that the reasons he escaped from society and his family was so he could live life unfiltered and so he would be able to be his true self in the wilderness, but instead nature was a way to sustain his depiction, and keep his real self hidden from the world. …show more content…

This was an extremely significant part to the story, and it doesn’t justify his immaterialism like you might think. He could have very well left his money in the street, forest or given it to someone else. The fact that he burnt the money, shows that it meant something to him. People who have riots or uprisings and burn flags for example, would only be burning it because it meant something to them. Chris McCandless wanted to be immaterialistic, but we see that he purposely tried removing the cash from his life by burning it. We further see his materialism come back in a few parts of this story, like when he gets a job or when he takes gifts offered to him by the people he meets on the way to the

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