Surely you've heard about this guy. Chris McCandless was a guy that seemed to have his future figured out. He had graduated from Emory University and had the opportunity to go to law school, but was obsessed with the idea that he could separate himself from the emptiness of society by living a very modest lifestyle. McCandless' story went viral to the public in 1993 when Krakauer published an article about Chris in Outside magazine, which he later expanded into a book called Into the Wild in 1996. Here are some quotes to the book incase you want to hear the author's language. This rebel's fame only grew even more with Sean Penn's film adaptation (released in 2007) of the novel.
This guy had a lot going for him that all of us currently are going to this university to earn. He graduated from Emory University and had been accepted to law school when he decided to free himself from the bonds of society, donate all his assets to charity, and travel the U.S. living as simply as possible. While the movie portrays Chris as a dude who loves the outdoors and is sort of happy-go-lucky, I have heard that the book paints a much more troubled character. However, I have not read the book myself, so some feedback on that would be helpful if anybody has read it!
I regard McCandless' decision to venture off into the Alaskan wildnerness with little supplies, no compass, no means of communication, and without a soul knowing he was going out there (except for the Alaskan who dropped him off, but that dude didn't even know Chris, he just knew him by his faux name, Alexander Supertramp). Although I think, Chris is an idiot, I would not have stopped the guy from going out there. But does anybody disagree?
Christopher clearly held some ideals that led him to separate himself from society. He fell into some kind of belief that society was corrupting him. He felt that nature could purify his soul. Now I am not saying being out in the open is not refreshing, but Christopher truly thought he could be absolved the mistakes that people make and negative aspects of human culture by hiding in the open. Justin pointed out the ironic part of his death to me. The guy that ran away from society made his camp in a bus and died in capitalist society's evil manufactured metal capsule. McCandless definitely wanted to find a primitive state of nature or garden of eden or something like that. He fell into the trap that this kind of thing exists.
I really enjoyed Cronon's essay about wilderness and I think the same idea can be applied to a lot of other things in society. For example, debate about global warming has been prevalent in the last decade. I think that people are not going to stop producing carbon emissions anytime soon because our culture (and many around the world) are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. I believe that the earth goes through warmer and cooler periods, has before we got here, and will continue to in the future. However, I believe there is a faction out there that holds the notion that we need to basically kill ourselves to save the environment. Does anyone else see this kind of idea elsewhere?
Works Cited
1. image 1 http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2009/06/into-the-wild.jpg&imgrefurl=http://artofmanliness.com/2009/06/29/50-non-fiction-adventure-books/&h=246&w=608&sz=40&tbnid=31sTf_FXeD9ETM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=227&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dchris%2Bmccandless%2Bself%2Bportrait%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=chris+mccandless+self+portrait&usg=__PMjG2j572Y-HREMkcIVIRSWeQ-M=&docid=00X2VImJJsGLWM&sa=X&ei=P8S7UO7nDs_-2QWv7YGoDw&ved=0CD0Q9QEwBA&dur=351
2. image 2 http://blog.mlive.com/projectmayhem/2007/10/large_inwild.jpg
I have never heard of this guy, but it is an interesting story. A lot of times we get so swallowed up in materialistic things we forget about the simple aspects of life. This guy went a little overboard with it, but I think his head was in the right place. If everyone would appreciate nature and the simple life a little more it would be a better world.
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