The Search For Meaning in How to Tell a True War Story, and Into the Wild

Life is a series of questions that people strive to answer through desperate endeavors to put some value and meaning behind their existence and purpose. However, it has been a mystery as to how to achieve those answers. A popular misleading belief is that the answers to life’s questions begin from answering the biggest question of them all “Who am I?” To discover the answer to this and all other questions, people use the assistance of others around them. Interacting and forming relationships with others allows one to not only to get to know those people, but also discover him/herself in that process. Writer Robert Thurman would agree with the notion of the crucial necessity of humans to be interconnected with their community and environment, conversely he would disagree with the concept of defining and labeling the self to just be one determined identity, and he defends this argument in his text “Wisdom.” Similarly, in war veteran and author Tim O’Brien’s narration “How to Tell a True War Story” he illustrates the imperative role that the bond he shared with fellow soldiers played during the Vietnam War and in discovering new things about each other’s personality. However, writer Jon Krakauer takes readers on an expedition to follow the journey of Christopher McCandless in the Alaskan wilderness in his narrative selections from Into the Wild, trying to define McCandless’ identity and believes that isolation from society may lead to the discovery of the self. All three authors delve into the importance that the self and interconnectedness, hold in life. Although they discuss similar concepts, not all three authors have the same viewpoints about the notions. Thurman and O’Brien share similar positions about the self and interconnect...

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...ow troops during war. Although they may not share the same perspective, all three authors notice the imperative roles that self and interconnectedness play in life. Self and interconnectedness are all limitless, flexible, and indefinable. All three are fundamental elements of life but possess so much complexity that they cannot be understood from merely above the surface; instead, they require a well-developed inquiry like all three authors respectfully attempt.

Work Cited

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Villard Books, Random House, 1996.

Miller, Richard E., and Kurt Spellmeyer. The New Humanities Reader. 4th ed. Mason,

OH: Cengage Learning, 2012.

O’Brien, Tim. “How to Tell a True War Story.” The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway

Books. 1998. 67-85.

Thurman, Robert. Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well. New York: Riverhead Books, 2004.