The emerald leaves of the elder tree rustle above you, providing a cooling breeze to your sweaty, sticky skin. While you admire the unstable house you just built from dead leaves and rotting wood, you hear the cry of an antelope in the distance, being gruesomely attacked by an animal attempting to have a fresh dinner. The house is dysfunctional at best, but a shelter nonetheless, that you would have to be come accustomed to for as long as you live in the wild. With nothing but a homemade hammer and a rifle, you prepare yourself for what is to come. The view from the little hut is serene, but filled with massive mysteries, dangers, and uncertainties that you must face. Since there is nobody around for miles, these challenges would be faced alone, and with no other materials or people. Will you survive? This was an experience that both Henry David Thoreau from Walden and Chris McCandless from Into the Wild decided to endure. Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau had similarities and differences, such as they both wanted to escape society for different reasons, they both wanted to live in solitude for similar and different reasons, and they both strived to live an non-materialistic lifestyle.
To begin, McCandless went into the wild to flee from his parents and an unjust civilization, while Thoreau believed life moved too quickly in society and he wanted to try and find the true meaning of life. Firstly, McCandless’ relationship with his dad grew progressively worse as he got
To some, adventurers like Chris McCandless are young, idealistic, and resolute people with high moral standards. They want to take everything they can out of life, and they want to experience every facet of it. However, this isn’t a view everyone shares. To some, McCandless was an irrational kid with no experience who couldn’t handle is family issues. On the other hand, Henry David Thoreau is viewed as a calm, steady, and contemplative man with a strong love of nature. Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau share many similarities, but they also have defining differences. There are three ways that we can compare these people: Chris went to the woods to escape his past whereas as Thoreau went there to be with nature, Chris was very
Chris McCandless went out into the wild with different intention’s then Thoreau. One of Thoreau’s intentions was to get away from the government because of his disagreements with slavery. He left because he didn’t want to support the government by paying his taxes. Chris McCandless never showed any reasons for leaving that helped anyone else. He left in his own selfish manner. McCandless was running away from his own problems that could have been worked out with his family. When reading Thoreau’s Experiment at Walden Pond it states that Thoreau spent his time at the house writing, reading, taking long walks, observing nature and entertaining visitors. This quote explains that Thoreau used his time alone to focus on his writing and observing nature. McCandless’s main focus was surviving. He didn’t have time for anything else.
The arguably most apparent aspect in which the personalities of Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau truly paralleled one another can be quite blatantly seen within their shared initial and over-arching motivation supporting their unified desire to journey into the wild: The burning need to escape materialism as a whole, as well as constantly progressing technology, both of which were, and still are, prominent in every area of society. This core incentive is very evidently described in the line, scribed within Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life” (Thoreau 59). He then expands upon this belief, and provides support for his naturalistic intentions, with the following statement: “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms” (Thoreau 59). Thoreau passionately felt that civilization as a whole had become entirely over-dependent upon a chaotic mess of irrelevant details, the majority of which everyone had begun to mistakenly perceive as necessities, to the point where he finally announced the complete control he felt technology had over society through the phrase, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us” (Thoreau 60). Each of these meaningless affairs, he said, revolved solely around the very concepts from which he was determined to find refuge
Does living a life in the wilderness bring betterment to people’s lives? According to Christopher McCandless and Henry Thoreau, it really did. In the book, Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer, the author tells the story of young Christopher J. McCandless who seemingly decides one day to give away his savings to charity, pack up his car, and leave his home and family for a life of wandering and adventure. His story ends with his eventual death in the Alaskan Yukon, but Krakauer goes into what may have caused him to do such a thing and how those who’s lives the young man touched felt about his death. Multiple parallels can be seen between McCandless and author Henry Thoreau. Among McCandless’ possessions found with his body in August of 1992, was
McCandless was trapped in a society that created an illusion of his own fake happiness while he was looking to discover himself. He possessed a desperate need to find the true meaning that only he could answer. McCandless quotes “I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me
To Henry David Thoreau, nature serves as a reminder to take a break from the fast paced style of life. Thoreau is a transcendentalist writer who isolated himself from society to live a life at his own pace. The title of his work, Where I Lived and What I Lived For, presents the purpose of his writing. Thoreau expresses where he resided and his reasoning for living there. He successfully achieves his purpose through the use of aphorisms and paradox. He begins his essay with direct and simple vocabulary that clearly states his purpose. He “went to the woods” in order “to front only the essential facts of life”. His destination and intentions are clear. His diction represent his way of thought where details are not needed. His use of aphorisms
In Ticknor 2). Some people are too afraid to change how they’re living, even when they don’t like it, they don’t like being confined. Especially, for a man or boy, they’re the ones that generally are more adventurous and bold, keeping people confined or secured doesn’t bring out their inner self and who they are. He even says in his journal he was keeping: “He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others…I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet, secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them” (Qtd. In Ticknor 3). Which is him saying that leaving his home and going into the wild to be independent, he did find himself along with finding happiness. It also says: “Thoreau’s teaches us about the importance of having a vision, of believing in truth, whatever we call that truth, and of seeing our existence as the exploration of multiple possibilities” (Qtd. In Thoreau 4) which is probably where McCandless acquired his idea of going into the wild to find himself, arise from. McCandless knew there were multiple possibilities as well as different things to do in life, he was
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American philosopher, author, poet, abolitionist, and naturalist. He was famous for his essay, “Civil Disobedience”, and his book, Walden. He believed in individual conscience and nonviolent acts of political resistance to protest unfair laws. Moreover, he valued the importance of observing nature, being individual, and living in a simple life by his own values. His writings later influenced the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. In “Civil Disobedience” and Walden, he advocated individual nonviolent resistance to the unjust state and reflected his simple living in the nature.
Into the Wild, a book about a man who ran away from childhood problems and decided to walk into the wilderness by himself after getting rid of all of his materialistic items like his car and money, and Walden, a book about a man who ran towards simplicity and solitude to understand what life was really about, are two incredible. The stories are timeless and will still be talked about in fifty years. The protagonists, Thoreau and Chris, had their differences and similarities. A big difference between them is their motives for leaving the city and going into the wilderness; Thoreau wanted to live life to the fullest, while Chris wanted to leave the problems at home. Both Chris and Thoreau rejected materialism, and they both respected animals.
Henry David Thoreau was man of simplicity, and if he were to experience life in Cary, he would not only be surprised, but disappointed in humanity itself. Thoreau believed in the necessities of life, nothing more, and the people of Cary live lives exactly the opposite. Cary residents live lives of material possessions, business, and over-complexity. These traits of society are precisely opposite of Thoreau’s
In April 1992, a young man named Chris McCandless, also known as Alexander Supertramp, stepped into the Alaskan bush on a journey to escape the materialistic society he came from and to pursue a life of adventure. Over a century earlier in 1845, another young man, Henry David Thoreau, built himself a small cabin in the wilderness with similar intentions. Both their adventures were recorded in Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, and Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, respectively. Although they had some similar beliefs, their mindsets were often different; both disregarded advice of others, though for different reasons, neither connected solitude to loneliness, and both men had different reasons for choosing materialistic free lifestyles.
“That government is best which governs least,” this is a quote from Henry David Thoreau from his well-known book called Civil Disobedience (Baym, Levine, 2012). This famous book was written after he was jailed for a night for refusing to pay a tax. However, the following day his relatives paid the tax and the incident inspired the book called Civil Disobedience. Though Henry David Thoreau is also known for being a poet, practical philosopher and his two-year project at Walden pond (“Henry David Thoreau,” 2014). The project consisted of him leaving behind the influence of society and living a minimalist lifestyle, but occasionally came to town. In the book, Walden, or Life in the Woods, in the economic portion, he reported the benefits of a
Henry David Thoreau, author of “Civil Disobedience” and Walden, has become one of the most influential authors of all time in the eyes of many. Though some might be led to believe his essays and writings, including “Where I Lived, and What I lived For”, make him a down to earth and even rugged author, as he spent some of his life in the forest. However, his life in the woods was not one of heavy duty work and he often was supported with objects and material possessions, contrary to what many of his essays describe. Although some might think of him as a cheater or a liar, Thoreau’s conflicting lifestyles prove him to be a literary genius as he successfully dictates a lifestyle he himself does not take part in throughout paragraphs one
Both Henry David Thoreau and Christopher McCandless ventured out into the woods to get away from the dreariness of everyday society and to find themselves. Only one lived to tell the tale. What was the fatal flaw of the man who didn’t continue on? The only way to find this is to analyze the differences and similarities between the two. McCandless, while embracing some of the same values as Thoreau, was ultimately a different man. While they led very contrasting lives in very distant times, both McCandless and Thoreau sought a type of freedom that can only be achieved when immersed in nature. Thoreau’s entitlement and cozy cabin in the woods is a far cry from McCandless’s constant struggle during his expedition, however, certain parallels
Author, Henry David Thoreau and Mary Oliver are both very passionate about nature and what it has to offer in life, as well as the symbolism behind nature and its creatures in their works of literature, in “Walden”, and “The House of Light”, Both authors discuss their views of nature and the beauty of the world that they want to make familiar to their audience. In this essay, I’ll provide my reasoning behind this statement.