Unwind Message
Many people will go through experiences in their lives where they feel like they are changing. It is as if life has dealt them enough experiences that their personalities have been altered because of it. Unwind by Neal Shusterman shows how the past experiences people go through may dictate who they become and the decisions they may make in the future through the lives of Roland, Admiral Dunfee, and Lev.
Throughout the novel, Roland is portrayed as an aggressive young man who has the desire to fight anyone who gets in his way. Yet as the readers soon discover, he is a young man with a very troubled past. Roland’s past shapes who he becomes today in that he is very distrusting of women due to the experiences he has gone through. As Connor finds out in the basement of the antique shop, Roland’s mother essentially abandoned him for her husband. As the novel states, “That’s not what did him in, though. Roland had beaten up his stepfather for beating his mom. The mother took her husband’s side, and the stepfather got off with a warning. Roland, on the other hand, was sent to be unwound” (Schusterman 99). After Roland’s mother abandoned him for his stepfather, he began to fight other individuals in order to gain power. Another example of Roland’s distrust for women comes at the very end of the novel when he is being unwound and he is recalling memories from his past. Roland recalls, “When I was three, I had a babysitter. She was beautiful. She shook my sister. Real hard. My sister got wrong. Never got right again. Beautiful is dangerous. Better get them first” (Schusterman 293). After this experience, Roland is likely to never trust women, or other beautiful people, again. For him to experience both his mother’s abandonment and his sister’s injuries at the hand of the babysitter, Roland chooses not to trust women again, resulting in his poor treatment of Risa, and the other females he comes in contact with.
Admiral Dunfee, similarly, is affected by his past. When the novel first introduces the Admiral, he is portrayed as a cold-hearted dictator in charge of hundreds of Unwinds, but there is a reason the Admiral comes off as distant. When the Unwinds first arrive at The Graveyard, they are expected to
Jon Krakauer had the same experience as McCandless with his family and travel to Alaska, but Krakauer knew more about survival and had company in case of any danger. Krakauer compares, “as a young man, I was unlike Mccandless in many important regard… And I suspect we had a similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul” (55). Acknowledging McCandless’s background, Chris left society because, in Krakauer’s point of view, of the “agitation of the soul” and the “similar heedless” of society. McCandless didn’t agree with society’s standards that being successful meant having a well paid occupation, especially when McCandless’s parents enforced it onto him. McCandless truly did not want to uphold the wishes of his parents, for Chris to go to college and get high paying career, but it wasn’t what Chris really wanted, so he left all of his conflicts with his parents and his values or “agitation of the soul” to create a new identity as Alex Supertramp and live in the wild. In today’s modern world, humanity lives in an environment where people are controlled and dependent on others. Chris’s father is someone he despises because of his characteristic of being controlling. Walter becomes controlling over Chris, who pressured him into college. As a result, Chris has an “agitation of the soul” to become independent, and a “heedlessness” for society and had an “intensity” for
Throughout the story of this one deployment, there are parts where the author talks about his early life as well as some parts of his earlier days in the Army. The author puts these Stories in to the book in an intriguing way to help explain why and how the author ended up where he did.
Another characteristic the author exhibits is forgiveness. The struggles her parents cause her display this trait. For instance, Ma constantly neglects Murray as a child. Drugs and alcohol consume the parent’s lives, so Murray and her older sister do not receive the proper care they need. Also, Ma frequently spent her daughter’s money or sold their items without their consent. The readers are astonished when the author says many times that she forgives Ma and just moves on. An important scene in the story occurs when Murray looks back on her childhood and forgives her mom for all of her wrongs, and concludes her mom did the best that she could do. Many people would resent their parents after all the hardships they caused, and so does the author at first. But she finds it in her heart to forgive which shows her kindness and really displays how mature of a person she is.
This is similar to what happened to Krebs in Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home”. Krebs has returned home to find that it is not that everybody and the world around him has changed, but he was the one that had changed. He has fought in some of the worst wars there were and he didn’t want to come back home. Krebs dreaded coming back to the states, and would have preferred to stay overseas. Krebs was once used to a normal life. He went to a Christian school and was a part of a fraternity. His perception on life had changed drastically after enlisting in the military and fighting in a war. When he returned home, the girls that he saw on the street were the same as when he was there years ago. His father still parks his car in the same spot day in and day out. His mother tries to encourage him to get a job, but he doesn’t care. He was so accustomed to the repetition of a soldier’s life. He couldn’t adjust to the typical lifestyle that other soldiers made. Somehow you can see the struggle he is going through. After the physical war, there was a war going on internally. Krebs had lost his emotion and will to care. The horror he experienced actually seeing first-hand life and death situations were incomprehensible to his parents. There was no way they would be able to identify with him.
Upon returning home the soldiers meet a field of new troubles that come with acclimation to society after fighting. Many soldiers come home with skills that are not applicable to their lives and generally a much deeper understanding of what they believe the world consists of. This leads to much disillusion with the world they come back to. In both Ernest Hemingway and Tim O’Brien’s stories, soldiers meet with disillusionment and disconnect from society. The soldiers react in different ways to this feeling; the authors use diction, sentence structure, and figurative language to demonstrate their troubles with acclimation.
As soon as I picked this book up, I could not put it down. Every chance I got, I was reading. I was begging in class for you to let us have down time so I could submerge myself into this virtual reality that I wanted to experience. Unfortunately at the end of this memoir, Chris McCandless dies of what Krakauer believes to be starvation. The cool thing about how Krakauer revised this novel is how he relates it to all teenagers. At one point in time mostly all teenagers have a fight with their parents and they feel as if running away from it all is their only escape. He focuses on Chirs McCandless’ life so much to create the theme that no matter how much you fight and argue, your parents love you and they want the best for you no matter what.
Additionally both men have jobs, their jobs have huge impacts on their futures. Notably one job was a positive influence in one Wes’s life, and the other ruined the Wes’s life. After the author Wes gets to military school, he is struggling with the fact that he was sent to military school. At first he hates it, but throughout the next few years of his life he learns to love it. After completing high school at Valley Forge, Wes makes the decision that would make an impact on his life for the better. After his Colonel left Valley Forge, Wes says, “My next decision was clear. I wanted to stay at Valley Forge and attend its junior college…and become a second lieutenant in the Army. I wanted to lead soldiers” (133). This was a major turning point in his life, this decision was what helped The author Wes stay out of trouble, and create a good life for himself. Wes went on to do good
Seven billion people in the world, all with unique personalities, on this earth to serve a purpose in their own life, or someone else’s. Chris McCandless was a man with unique qualities, and served to please himself and coincedently others as well. In the book “Into the Wild” the author, Jon Krakauer, explains the adventures and mishaps Chris McCandless went through in his life. Krakauer admired Chris for his personality, and his ability to be determined and hardworking at everything he did. Chris McCandless was an admirable man, with his individual view on life, and the way he could touch a person’s life and impact them forever.
Little things in one’s childhood can affect them in the long run and affect the decisions you make. In the book, Into the Wild, the author Jon Krakauer, tries to make the valid point that Chris McCandless was a hero, a noble and inspirational character. In the book, Krakauer fails to persuade the reader into the belief of the role that Chris McCandless was a “hero.” Chris McCandless was the son of two wealthy parents, and had so much great things going for him with a chance to a good working job and great opportunities, but instead to pursue in those opportunities he decided to get rid of all his possessions, and give everything up, even his family, and went on the journey to Alaska.
In this final chapter, O’Brien strings the various threads of plot events together to form a cohesive message. Each of the major themes is illuminated as each of the major stories is retold mostly told about Vietnam and a younger version of himself
In the novel “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer tells the story of a Chris McCandless through different points of view perceived from people close to him. Despite the fact the Krakauer did not personally know Chris McCandless, Krakauer uses opinions from himself and others to help conclude meaning and impact behindMcCandless’s journey. Krakauer introduces events in the story in an order such that it also introduces the significance behind them. These techniques help the reader conclude the mystery behind Chris McCandless’s journey.
Although Chris McCandless’ controlling and toxic family environment was a major motive for his escape, his deep-seated internal battle was simply an irresistible impulse for discovery and liberty. Chris’ journey shows a new level of freedom; what true independence holds. He set out into nature alone without support of family or friends, searching for a path unlike those of most, and running from a barred cage of conventional living. Unsatisfied and somewhat angry with himself and his life of abundance in money, opportunity, and security, his preceding experiences and determined character lead him to an inevitable flee into no-mans land. Throughout the novel, Krakauer wants the reader to understand that there is more to Chris than his habit of criticising authority and defying society’s pressures. He needed more from himself, and more from life. He wasn’t an ordinary man, therefore could not live with an ordinary life. Krakauer demonstrates this by creating a complex persona for Chris that draws you in from the beginning.
Many authors tend to use character transformations to further an idea in a story. Tim O’Brien’s story “The Things They Carried” has an open ending, which he uses to signal a new beginning with the transformation of Jimmy Cross. The transformation greatly ties in with one of the major themes of the story, that war changes people.
A father is a son’s first hero. No love is greater than that of a son to his father. A son grows up aspiring to be everything his father is, but what happened when you discover that your father isn’t half the man you thought he was? In Jon Krakauer’s novel entitled, Into the Wild the protagonist Chris McCandless discovers that his father was once living and secret life. One in which his father and mother hid from him, and upon discovery of this dark knowledge he slowly began to denounce himself as a “McCandless”.
By also tying in these simplistic pleasures, Krakauer adds depth to his descriptions of how his once pleasures have completely changed his lifestyle, as Krakauer learns of life moving forward post trauma.