Into The Wild Analysis

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Ian Kim ISEM 101 Into the Wild Professor Sowards May 12, 2015 Final Paper: Into the Wild There are times in life when we set out on adventures to discover more about ourselves. Sometimes it’s for self-discovery, and sometimes it’s to escape the ordinary life and live to our ideals. In Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction book “Into the Wild” Christopher McCandless goes out into the wild hoping to escape the past of his abusive father and find solitude in the wilderness. In this book, Chris is portrayed as a believer of idealism and physical endurance. He believed that pursuing our ideals and testing ourselves physically and mentally was a good way to learn more about ourselves. Inspired by his idealistic view, McCandless started his journey across America…show more content…
When McCandless set out on his journey into the American frontier, he was trying to live to his own values and passions in life. He found solitude in the wilderness and tested his mental and physical abilities isolating himself for as long as four months with no human interaction at all. Chris McCandless was a rebel who looked for freedom. Upset by his parents, he basically quits society and leaves in search of “ultimate freedom.” He donated all of his college fund to OxFam, abandons all he owns, and destroys his identity by burning his ID cards. In McCandless’s opinion, ultimate freedom is reached when he is completely alone living by laws only set by nature. Although his diary shows him reaching ultimate freedom and living in his ideal state, he realizes that not everything is as it seems until he experiences every aspect of it. He spends so much time looking for food and trying to survive and that he forgets to appreciate the beauty of wilderness. His journal entries merely consist of the food that he had to eat that day. From this, we can understand that although wilderness simply looks beautiful from a visitor’s point of view, there are many harsh and extreme sides to it once we experience it as a

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