Into The Wild, When I Woke Up On Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday, and Another Look Back, And A Look Ahead

1558 Words4 Pages

Humans have achieved evolutionary progress in history through the desire to live a better life and the ability to adapt to even the harshest conditions. To be sheltered from the harsh weather conditions, early humans learned to live in caves. To fight off wild animals as well as to cook food, humans developed their own way of making fire after accidental encounters of the process through wildfires caused by lightning. However, progress did not come lightly and through the search for further progress, humans are inevitably reunited with unintended negative consequences for which Edward Tenner called “revenge effects”. In Jon Krakauer’s “Selections from Into the Wild,” Christopher McCandless was adamant about achieving “true progress” in life in the hope of demonstrating to others his ability to be completely independent from society. In order to live up to his self-established survival principles, McCandless brought little equipments while plunging head-deep into an inhospitable environment during the most unwelcoming season though still managing to conqueror most of the setbacks he encountered through the little time spent in the Alaskan wilderness. Similarly to McCandless, Martha Stout’s patients in “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday” sought progress by seeking help in recovering their sense of self after trauma. Meanwhile, Edward Tenner highlighted society’s long years spent on improving transportation and navigation in “Another Look Back, and a Look Ahead”. In a positive light, all the works had portrayed their characters achieving a certain degree of progress after a certain period of time. The chief differences lie in the level of difficulty in achieving the progress, the amount of time the characters were permit...

... middle of paper ...

...caution and a better assessment of the risks that were present. Instead, people are nevertheless drawn to make rash assumptions, and overestimating their own abilities. These negative human qualities not only hinder progress but can also create new obstacles in life.

Works Cited

Krakauer, Jon. “Selections from Into the Wild .” The New Humanities Reader. Fourth ed. Miller, Richard E., and Kurt Spellmeyer. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 202-222. Print.

Stout, Martha. “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday.” The New Humanities Reader. Fourth ed. Miller, Richard E., and Kurt Spellmeyer. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 380-398. Print.

Tenner, Edward. “Another Look Back, and a Look Ahead” The New Humanities Reader. Fourth ed. Miller, Richard E., and Kurt Spellmeyer. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 432-456. Print.

Open Document