Analysis William Cronan's "The Trouble with Wilderness"

Similar to the concepts in Introduction: In Search of Nature, Cronon challenges popular concepts of wilderness. Cronon begins by saying “the time has come to rethink wilderness.” The author elaborates on this idea with support from the general concept that wilderness isn’t what it seems. Cronon implies that wilderness is a product of civilization, and wilderness isn’t as pristine as commonly thought. Similar to Introduction: In Search of Nature, this text claims that we see wilderness from our own biased perspectives, which are influenced by our longing/desires. The author states that wilderness was once perceived as a bad thing (e.g. Adam and Eve being cast from Eden into the wilderness), but today we search for a soul cleansing, anti-civilization,

In Jon Krakauer's novel Into the Wild, the main character, Chris McCandless, seeks nature so that he can find a sense of belonging and the true meaning of who he is. However, it is the essence of nature that eventually takes his life away from him. At the end of his life, he is discovers his purpose and need of other people. After Chris McCandless death in Alaska, Krakauer wrote Into the Wild to reflect on the journey that McCandless makes. Krakauer protrays McCandless as a young man who is reckless, selfish, and arrogant, but at the same time, intelligent, determined, independent, and charismatic. Along with the irony that occurs in nature, these characteristics are the several factors that contribute to McCandless death.

Surviving in Alaska is no simple task. You are constantly putting your life in danger. Living of the and is no vacation. Christopher McCandless was not an exception to these facts. In the book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, the protagonist Christopher McCandless dies due to his inexperience surviving in climates like Alaska. What happened to him could have been prevented. First of all, Chris would have had a better chance at survival if he was more prepared to live in Alaska. Secondly, Chris made many mistakes that led to his death that could have be less severe if he knew what to do. Finally, Chris was not the only one that made mistakes that cost them their lives.

In a chilling recollection of mankind’s current misdeeds towards the environment in “The End of Nature,” McKibben’s call for action is one paramount to the survival of the human race. In essence, McKibben argues that the futures of both nature and ourselves are delicately yet undeniably interconnected. Furthermore, he urges that “we” (ALL humans) are the deciding chip in said bond. By doing so, McKibben implies that action must be situated if we are to expect any change in such bleak a situation. This argument can clearly be found when McKibben speaks out on a myriad of environmental issues in the past, present, and future. McKibben begins to accustom readers to a pattern in which human ignorance juts out from past environmental experiences.

Through removal and technology, humans have started to become isolated from the wilderness and the nature around them. This view distinctly contrasts with Thoreau’s perspective. “Though he [Thoreau] never put humans on the same moral level as animals or trees, for example, he does see them all linked as the expression of Spirit, which may only be described in terms of natural laws and unified fluid processes. The self is both humbled and empowered in its cosmic perspective,” states Ann Woodlief. The technologies that distract and consume us, and separate us from the natural world are apparent. Many people and children ins cities have seen little to no natural-grown things such as grass and trees. Even these things are often domesticated and tamed. Many people who have never been to a National Park or gone hiking through the wilderness do not understand its unruly, unforgiving, wild nature. These aspects, thought terrifying to many, are much of why the wilderness is so beautiful and striking to the human heart. “Thoreau builds a critique of American culture upon his conviction that ‘the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality,’” pronounces Rick Furtak, quoting Thoreau’s Life

In chapter 7 of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer Chris rejects a plane ticket from his employer and partial friend, Wayne Westerberg. “McCandless wouldn’t even consider it.” (67) He said, “‘No, I want to hitch north. Flying would be cheating.

Occasionally in a person's life, he or she wonders about a certain purpose in life. In extreme cases, when a person attempts to find one's self, he or she may find his or herself in a dangerous or even deadly position. In Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, Chris McCandless goes out into the wilderness of Alaska to find himself, but he never returns. Jon Krakauer organizes his novel in a circular way, which ties the story together well, and he uses long, periodic sentences to detail and emphasize his points about life and death situations in order to create an aspect of imagery and description throughout the novel.

According to William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness”, the main concerns with the wilderness term being humanly constructed and lack of concern with the local environments. Cronon emphasize much of the historical and philological meanings of wilderness as a human construct via spiritual and religious perspectives. He desired for people stop putting so much emphasis on the above and beyond that is out of our reach and focus on the present. He pushed this into the idea of one should start putting emphasis and care into one’s own environment rather than just focusing on environments beyond the local one. He believes change should start locally.

Coming from an uncultivated society, such as the one that brought farming and ranching to the settlement of North America, humans have retained some sensitivity to environmental issues as they derived their livelihood directly from the land. But with the advance to an urban or metropolitan society, there has been a major disconnect between humanity and nature. Today’s urban society is provided with mowed parks, paved playgrounds, plush automobiles to move the public around on asphalt roads, housing with automatically regulated heat and cooling, and supermarkets with shopping carts and baskets, in which people can gather their food supplies from orderly shelves and freezers. Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” term suggests that humans stop treating the land as a mere object or a resource, like how the world does today. For Leopold, land is not merely soil, like the public would think of today; land is a fountain of energy, flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals.

This civilization is narrow minded towards nature. Majority of people believe that it’s weird to drive slow and look around, “(....) drove 40 miles and hour and they jailed him(..)”(Bradburry 3). When you are driving people in this world are different than us because they go so fast they don’t want to go slow enough to see all the ugliness of the outside. Also, they think that it’s unusual to take a moment to “(...) go out and hike around in the forests (...)”(Bradbery 22. The world is so closed off to such beautiful things. Then Montag seemed “shocked”(Bradbury 26) when he compared , “cinnamon” (Bradbury 26) to smells that has sensed before. This is because they cared enough to stop and think. All of nature is something that they haven’t explored.

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, creates a thought-provoking idea of the separation between people and nature in this excerpt from his book. His opinionated tone forces the reader to be concerned for the future generations by including ironic hyperboles and sarcastic diction, which appeal to the readers’ pathos. He uses these rhetorical strategies to indirectly state his opinions.

A question I have for you is how you do see humans in relations to Nature? Nature is a vague term, and the way you emphasize people to embrace its simplicity implies humans were apart from Nature to begin with. This inherently

Have you ever felt the need to learn more about yourself as a human being and test yourself in a distressing world? Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer creates a young man who sees himself fiercely independent, over-confidence and an isolated person who makes his own decisions. He rejects to continue his education further and leaves that behind like how he left his own family who he does not care about at all. Chris underestimated the Alaskan wild. Throughout his quest, he faces hard obstacles and tries to find out who he truly is. He knew it well enough to survive out in the wild when the truth is he was actually dead as soon as he walked into the park.

The people nowadays also abuse on what nature can provide to them. People are influenced by the western Culture, Man is more powerful and can have dominion over nature and that nature as they see become merely an instrument to satisfy human needs and wants. This kind of thinking or we can say attitude towards nature is called the “Anthropocentric Attitude”. Man reduce the value of nature as it is and it’s important because nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man and that the value of non-human things in nature is merely instrumental. An opposite thinking would be the Eastern Culture, for they value nature very well and they treat nature being one with them. This thinking or attitude is known as “Ecocentric

Nature is merely our instrument of conquering one another. By manipulating what already exists, we create everything from nuclear warheads to high speed internet. The continuous competition between men feeds off of our technological advancement—none of which would be possible without the resources Nature provides for us. And rather than being grateful for the unequivicable power so generously offered us by our environment, we instead mock its existence. We distract from the cunningness and cruelty of our efforts toward mankind by relabeling our target ‘Nature’ rather than ‘each other’. By convincing ourselves we are somehow beginning to have Nature within our control and understanding, we forget that Nature is really only the means, not the end of our conquest. We will not be satisfied until we have defeated ourselves. As Lewis puts it, “Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won… But who, precisely, will have won it?” (The Abolition of Man, 421)