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Analysis of the movie into the wild
Analysis of the movie into the wild
Essay on transcendentalism literature
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Transcendentalism has been felt by all humans at one point or another, the outcome all depends on whether or not this feeling is acted upon. Various sources have all explored transcendentalism and its effects / outcomes, and these sources have ranged from songs, to poems, to books, and even movies. All of these sources tend to lead towards one distinct definition. This definition can be supported by all of my material and transcendentalism is best defined, through these sources, as a philosophy that reality should be explored through spiritual means, involving a unique spiritual connection with the natural world around you.
There are many excellent verbal illustrations of transcendentalism in the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds from their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. The Beatles mention many various aspects of transcendentalism within one song. The song starts at the very beginning by asking you to “Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.” Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds begins by asking you to picture yourself in nature, to get you to visualize the natural world. They then proceed to describe nature fantastically, with vivid colors, and words that evoke other sentences, leading you to believe that you have a more unique connection with nature than you used to have now that you headed into nature. Then, later in the song, you stand underneath these large yellow and green flowers made of cellophane that tower over your head. By having the flowers tower over your head, those flowers illustrate the total immersion into nature that is a core part of transcendentalism. Yellow and green are also both colors generally associated more with nature, subtly referencing the...
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...any have failed. It has become a sort of rite of passage, if you will. A majority of young men feel that calling at one time or another, the outcome all depends on whether you answer, ignore, or try to fight the call of the wild.
Works Cited
Call of the Wild. Dir. Peter Svatek. Lions Gete, 1997.
“A Discussion About the Film ‘Into the Wild’.” Charlie Rose. PBS. KCTS, Seattle. 21 Sept. 2007.
D’Oro, Rachel. “Close to Home: Harsh Alaskan Reality Lies Behind Growing ‘Into the Wild’ Mystique.” The Seattle Times 3 August 2008: J4.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Books, 1997.
McCartney, Paul, and John Lennon. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." Rec. 1 Mar. 1967. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles. George Martin, 1967. Vinyl recording.
Thoreau, Henry David. From Walden. American Literature. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968.
In John Krakauer’s novel Into The Wild, the reader follows the life of a young man who, upon learning of his father’s infidelity and bigamy, seems to go off the deep end, isolating himself by traveling into the wild country of Alaska, unprepared for survival, where he died of starvation at 67 pounds.
The epigraphs presented by Krakauer before each chapter of the memoir Into the Wild dive deep into the life of Chris McCandless before and after his journey into the Alaskan wilderness. They compare him to famous “coming of age characters” and specific ideas written by some of his favorite philosophers. These give the reader a stronger sense of who Chris was and why he made the decision to ultimately walk alone into the wild.
When Jon Krakauer published a story about the death of a young man trekking into the Alaskan frontier in the January 1993 issue of Outside magazine, the audience’s response to Christopher McCandless’s story was overwhelming. Thousand of letters came flooding in as a response to the article. Despite the claims, especially from the native Alaskans, questioning McCandless’s mental stability and judgement, it soon becomes clear that McCandless was not just "another delusional visitor to the Alaskan frontier" (4). As Krakauer retells the life of Christopher McCandless and gives his own take on the controversy around McCandless’s death in Into The Wild, the reader also creates his own opinion on both McCandless and Krakauer’s argument. Krakauer
Thesis- In Jon Krakauer's nonfiction novel, Into the Wild, the wilderness is a natural home to seekers, a place free of the harm of a modern society, where a seeker can explore the lands and experience life by their own rules.
What is transcendentalism? Webster says transcendentalism is a philosophy that says that thought and spiritual things are more real than ordinary human experience and material things. The more simplified definition of it is the idea that our spirits have deep connection with. We are more "in tune" with nature and our mood is depicted by nature. So people can come to the conclusion that the “going green” movement and being “eco-friendly” is all a part of transcendentalism, and people who support these movements are transcendentalists. Leonardo DiCaprio, a multi millionaire, lives his life eco-friendly, and donates millions of dollars to protect our environment. By doing this, he is showing that he values the environment and nature more than he values material items, which is part of being a transcendentalist. DiCaprio is also an advocate for the gay rights movement. The other part of being a transcendentalist is the independence of the individual; and in today’s society the gay rights movement has become a great deal and the supporters of gay rights can be considered transcendentalists because homosexuality is interlinked with independence of the individual, which is stressed by transcendentalism.
“I now walk into the wild” (3). It was April 1992 a young man from a rather wealthy family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness. His name was Christopher McCandless. He gave all of his savings to a charity, abandoned his car in the desert, left all his possessions, burned his money and wallet, and invented an alter ego all to shun society. Four months after his adventure, his decomposing body was found in bus 142 by a moose hunter. Into the Wild is a riveting novel about one man’s journey to find himself and live as an individual. Although, Chris McCandless may come as an ill-prepared idiot, his reasons for leaving society are rational. He wanted to leave the conformist society and blossom into his own person, he wanted to create his own story not have his story written for him, and he wanted to be happy not the world’s form of happiness.
The book Into The Wild, written by Jon Krakauer, tells the story of Chris McCandless a young man who abandoned his life in search of something more meaningful than a materialistic society. In 1992 Chris gave his $ 25,000 savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, and burned all of his money to chase his dream. Chris’s legacy was to live in simplicity, to find his purpose, and to chase his dreams. Chris McCandless’s decision to uproot his life and hitchhike to Alaska has encouraged other young adults to chase their dreams. Neal Karlinksy illustrates the love Chris had for nature in the passage, “He was intoxicated by the nature and the idea of a great Alasican adventure-to survive in the bush totally alone.”
The novel “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer goes into great detail to describe the main character, Chris McCandless, who died traveling alone into the Alaskan wilderness. McCandless, whom in the novel renamed himself Alex, left his home and family to travel to Alaska in 1992. In Alaska McCandless planned to live an isolated life in the desolate wilderness, but unfortunately he did not survive. This non-fiction novel portrays his life leading up to his departure and it captures the true essence of what it means to be “in the wild”.
The Transcendentalism movement grew out of Unitarianism, which is a religious movement in which it is strongly stood behind the bringings of stability, rational though, and marks of Enlightened Christianity. Unitarianism would try to increase their relevancy by start to instill their values, and eventually
Many people have theories and philosophies about life in general. There have been hundreds of thousands of books published by many different people on the ideas of people in the past and the present. Transcendentalism falls in amongst all of these ideas. There have been articles, essays, poems, and even books written about this subject. Transcendentalism has effected many people since the philosophy was first introduced. The idea was complex and hard to grasp for many commoners and therefore it was understood by few people, and some would think that the idea was not understood at all and that was part of the idea. Henry David Thoreau once stated about himself, “I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations” (Reuben 1).
Into the Wild by John Krakauer is a rare book in which its author freely admits his bias within the first few pages. “I won't claim to be an impartial biographer,” states Krakauer in the author’s note, and indeed he is not. Although it is not revealed in the author's note whether Krakauer's bias will be positive or negative, it can be easily inferred. Krakauer's explanation of his obsession with McCandless's story makes it evident that Into the Wild was written to persuade the reader to view him as the author does; as remarkably intelligent, driven, and spirited. This differs greatly from the opinion many people hold that McCandless was a simply a foolhardy kid in way over his head. Some even go as far as saying that his recklessness was due to an apparent death-wish. Krakauer uses a combination of ethos, logos and pathos throughout his rendition of McCandless’s story to dispute these negative outlooks while also giving readers new to this enigmatic adventure a proper introduction.
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.
Into the Wild, written by John Krakauer tells of a young man named Chris McCandless who 1deserted his college degree and all his worldly possessions in favor of a primitive transient life in the wilderness. Krakauer first told the story of Chris in an article in Outside Magazine, but went on to write a thorough book, which encompasses his life in the hopes to explain what caused him to venture off alone into the wild. McCandless’ story soon became a national phenomenon, and had many people questioning why a “young man from a well-to-do East Coast family [would] hitchhike to Alaska” (Krakauer i). Chris comes from an affluent household and has parents that strived to create a desirable life for him and his sister. As Chris grows up, he becomes more and more disturbed by society’s ideals and the control they have on everyday life. He made a point of spiting his parents and the lifestyle they lived. This sense of unhappiness continues to build until after Chris has graduated college and decided to leave everything behind for the Alaskan wilderness. Knowing very little about how to survive in the wild, Chris ventures off on his adventure in a state of naïveté. It is obvious that he possessed monumental potential that was wasted on romanticized ideals and a lack of wisdom. Christopher McCandless is a unique and talented young man, but his selfish and ultimately complacent attitude towards life and his successes led to his demise.
Into the wild is a non-fiction book which expanded from the nine-thousand-word article by Jon Krakauer. This article ran in the January 1993 issue of the magazine Outside. Jon Krakauer was very much drawn toward the tale of McCandless and decided to write his story. He spent more than a year tracking down the details of the boy’s tramp. Then he used matter-of-fact tones to narrate what he chased on the path about the boy. The framework presented in this book can be separated into three parts: (1) retracing, including the interview with most of the important people who once kept company with Chris; (2) wildness, presenting mails generated from readers and several idealists that were in the similar situation with Chris; (3) affection, including the memory of parents, sister and friends.
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.