Life on the road is meant for the strong at heart and the mindful skills of a person who knows what they’re doing. To live the life on the road you need a set skill and mind to handle the rough odds ahead of yourself. It is not for the weak and the non experience because they will get brutally hurt or even worse killed in the process. Challenges such as food, knowing where to find clean water, heat for the cold nights, shelter, and most important how to hunt and pick berries. Without these essential set skills a person will not make it on their own on the road by themselves. Some of us are born into a society of helpful hands and assistance with daily life functions, but in this case you will be alone with no helping hand or handouts. Life on the road is meant for the strong and is not for everyone. Christopher Johnson McCandless is a prime example of not being able to handle the challenges on the road. Introduced in chapter one as Alex, he is picked up by a truck driver and is described to have barely anything to help him on his journey. On chapter one, page five the statement, “ Still, Gallien was concerned. Alex admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice. His gear seemed exceedingly minimal for the harsh conditions of the interior,”(5) Gallien notices that Alex doesn’t even have the bare essential to even keep up with the harsh conditions he will face alone. Having the right gear and supplies for the road is a need. Without it you might as well consider yourself dead or quit while you are ahead. Another example of him not being prepared is his hunting weapon. “His rifle was only .22 caliber, a bore too small to rely on if he expected to kill large animals like moose and caribou, which he would have to... ... middle of paper ... ... in what you can do. The things you learn from being by yourself and taking care of yourself amazing. You learn how to hunt for your food, learn how to pick from plants to eat, and also know where to find clean what to bathe and drink from. Knowledge you gain from this journey you can take is endless and growing. Biggest advantage over people who spent their whole life in a house and having things handed to them Life on the road is not for everyone, it’s for the strong at heart and mind. The willfulness to survive and make it. If you can’t strive to survive it’s not meant for you and you may just die trying. Alex himself was not ready himself, I wasn’t ready when I first started off. Life on the road deals with challenges not everyday city people deal with but more of how to survive off nature herself and also having the skills to make it and get by day by day.
My car slows as it approaches a stoplight. I take this opportunity to allow my mind to become engulfed with my surroundings: the bright fierce red of the traffic light, the brilliant blue sky with its specs clouds, and the mass of hurried people. The four corners of the intersection are filled with people who are preoccupied with their fast-paced lives to notice the little things, such as animals and anxious cars awaiting the traffic light. My thoughts vigorously put all of the information that my mind has gathered from the intersection to order.
bring enough equipment with him. The man is also confident. For example, he thinks he has enough equipment for his trip. The Traveler, in Jack London’s story, “To Build a Fire” is a great example of being unprepared and he is confident.
In the book, “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, the main character Christopher McCandless is foolish,brave, and psychotic. He is foolish for dropping everything to go on an impossible “hike” through the Alaskan backcountry, brave for sticking through it, and psychotic.
People come to being on the road for countless reasons and though there is no real certainty on the road, there are two things that are certain, the road stands in opposition to home and your race and ethnicity plays a major role on the trajectory and the way others treat you on the journey. African Americans have an especially strong connection to road narratives. This is because, from the beginning, the race’s presence in America was brought by forcing them on to the road against their will. It is for this reason that there are countless narratives, fictional and non-fictional, of black peoples on the road. For Birdie Lee, a literary character, the beginning of the road marks the end of her comfortable home life and the beginning of her racial
As Chris became more fascinated with the wilderness, he increasingly became indifferent towards different aspects of his life. Chris’ operation prior to embarking in the wilderness was fruitless because he lacked the sufficient and valuable preparations. Furthermore, it is appropriate to say that the actions that he took were beyond heedless: “He spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild” (Christian 1). Practice makes perfect is a common proverb that echoes throughout society but was unfortunately missing from Chris’ life. Chris’ enthusiasm towards nature prevented him from making a logical decision of having sufficient experience with the wilderness itself. Ultimately, Chris was an oblivious person because he commenced into the wilderness with meager supplies. However, Chris failed at entering his excursion with sufficient preparations: “He left the map in Gallien’s truck, along with his watch, his comb, and all his money, which amounted to 85 cents” (2). By leaving his belongings in Gallien’s truck, Chris made an extremely absurd decision. More specifically, he disabled any possibility for him to receive immediate assistance when his health began declining rapidly. Finally, individuals should prioritize rationality in certain situations because it is crucial for them to use when they are blinded by a
In The Road McCarthy establishes a post-apocalyptic world in which the majority of population are cannibals. It is established that the public (majority) is hazardous to the two protagonist of the novel. The father and son are forced to kill or be killed. By thrusting the father and son into a world with their actions are predicated by the actions of the public, McCarthy is attempting to illustrate the significant influence one’s environment has on an individual. When the father and son are together in seclusion McCarthy showcases maturity in each of the characters. The conversations they have become more philosophical.
He took everything in his life to the extreme. As stated earlier, “It is hardly unusual for a young man to be drawn to a pursuit considered reckless by his elders; engaging in risky behavior is a rite of passage in our culture no less than in most others. Danger has always held a certain allure….”(Krakauer 182). People want to live while their young, therefore they take risks. However, what McCandless did was more than just risk taking. He contained something along the lines of an excessive hubris. ‘“He didn’t think the odds applied to him. We were always trying to pull him back from the edge,” vocalizes Walt McCandless (Krakauer 109). Trudging into the vast Alaskan wilderness without proper provisions is taking the extreme too far. As Krakauer states, “...[Chris] was fully aware when he entered the brush that he he had given himself a perilously slim margin for error” (182). Only someone with an extensive hubris would commit an act so dangerous and be confident in their survival. Although he lent himself to a handful of stupid mistakes, McCandless was far from an idiot. Even though the extreme he took his Alaska adventure to was ill-advised, there is something about Chris that is almost admirable. Many people have dreams and passions that get shoved into an old chest and are never to be visited again. In today’s society it seems as though everyone is
The Road, a post-apocalyptic, survival skills fiction book written by Cormac McCarthy and published in 2006 is part of the Oprah Winfrey book club. During an interview with Oprah, McCarthy answered questions about The Road that he had never been asked before because pervious to the interview he had never been interviewed. Oprah asked what inspired the heart breaking book; it turns out that McCarthy wrote the book after taking a vacation with his son John. While on the vacation he imagined the world fifty years later and seen fire in the distant hills. After the book was finished, McCarthy dedicated it to his son, John. Throughout the book McCarthy included things that he knows he and his son would do and conversations that he thinks they may have had. (Cormac). Some question if the book is worth reading for college course writing classes because of the amount of common writing “rule breaks”. After reading and doing assignments to go along with The Road, I strongly believe that the novel should be required for more college courses such as Writing and Rhetoric II. McCarthy wrote the book in a way to force readers to get out of their comfort zones; the book has a great storyline; so doing the assignments are fairly easy, and embedded in the book are several brilliant survival tactics.
Sometimes a character may be pushed over the edge by our materialistic society to discover his/her true roots, which can only be found by going back to nature where monetary status was not important. Chris McCandless leaves all his possessions and begins a trek across the Western United States, which eventually brings him to the place of his demise-Alaska. Jon Krakauer makes you feel like you are with Chris on his journey and uses exerts from various authors such as Thoreau, London, and Tolstoy, as well as flashbacks and narrative pace and even is able to parallel the adventures of Chris to his own life as a young man in his novel Into the Wild. Krakauer educates himself of McCandless’ story by talking to the people that knew Chris the best. These people were not only his family but the people he met on the roads of his travels- they are the ones who became his road family.
... steady immersion into the world. Ideally there is a feeling of a safe home to fall back on, but an exciting challenge ahead on our own. The process starts on the first day of school, the first day without your parents. Eventually we can spend the night at a friend’s house and then maybe even a week at summer camp. We learn to make ourselves food and to do our own laundry. We slowly learn to function on our own without the help of our parents. Obviously school is a necessary requirement for learning to do laundry but these are skills that our parents need to let us learn. They are there to help, but at some point we have to do it on our own.
As stated previously, McCandless had a deep bravery that protected him from the darkness of fear or negative thought. Never once in this story does he seem frightened in that he might lose his life, grow ill or become hurt, and in one way he proves this by his insatiable habit of hitchhiking, I mean, with all do respect he could have been picked up by a serial killer and that probably would have cut his adventure a little short. In addition, he does not cower to much of anything, his bravery led him to some pretty interesting place such as digging dead rats from farm equipment, diving waist deep in grime, muck, and not to mention stench, that is if you would consider all of that to be brave.
...emselves. They endure mosquitoes and rain and tough walking and bad river crossings and the possibility of bears. The burden the pilgrims carry to the bus is so heavy, laden with their frailties and hopes and desires, with their lives that don’t quite satisfy. Well, so many of them are young, and they’re lost, somehow, just as he was.” What makes Chris McCandless such a hero to young men is that he is easily relatable to those young men. As Neal Karlinsky writes of Chris McCandless,“McCandless tramped his way across North America determined to live completely free of the trappings of modern society. He was intoxicated by nature and the idea of a great Alaskan adventure — to survive in the bush totally on his own. In his last postcard to a friend, he wrote: "I now walk into the wild."
Life on the Road It’s fair to say that life on the road is something most people do not desire, as a way to live out their days; but a young man named Chris McCandless believed it was necessary to avoid the venomous grips of society. McCandless goes as far as to venture out to the rest of the United States and even crossing borders to achieve his true destination, Alaska. He shows us living such a life can hold many unique and wonderful experiences.
The structure and language used is essential in depicting the effect that the need for survival has had upon both The Man and The Boy in The Road. The novel begins in media res, meaning in the middle of things. Because the plot isn’t typically panned out, the reader is left feeling similar to the characters: weary, wondering where the end is, and what is going to happen. McCarthy ensures the language is minimalistic throughout, illustrating the bleak nature of the post-apocalyptic setting and showing the detachment that the characters have from any sort of civilisation. Vivid imagery is important in The Road, to construct a portrait in the reader's mind that is filled with hopelessness, convincing us to accept that daily survival is the only practical option. He employs effective use of indirect discourse marker, so we feel as if we are in the man’s thought. The reader is provided with such intense descriptions of the bleak landscape to offer a feeling of truly seeing the need for survival both The Man and The Boy have. The reader feels no sense of closu...
Living alone, however, yields much more room for fun. You can dine on pizza and beer every night if you wish and your friends can visit any time. The furniture will be of your choosing, like the smelly ceramic vase in the corner with the strange mouthpiece. And you can clean the house under your own standards of cleanliness, not your mom’s.