Into the Wild
In attempting to understand Everett Ruess and Chris McCandless, it can be illuminating to consider their deeds in a larger context. It is helpful to look at counterparts from a distant place and a century far removed.
Context?
This is from the section of Into the Wild in which Jon Krakauer presents multiple similar narratives to Chris's. Krakauer presents the stories of Ruess, Rosellini, Waterman, and McCunn as parallel stories.
Even when we were little he was very to himself. He wasn't antisocial-he always had friends, and everybody liked him-but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. he didn't seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.
Context?
This is Carine, Chris's sister, describing her brother's ability to be independent.
Significance?
But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before
Context?
This is the very end of the novel, and Huck is in nearly the same spot as where he started.
This is indeed Life itself!' turned suddenly to regard his beloved:-- She was dead!”
Context?
These are the final lines from Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Oval Portrait."
No longer would he answer to Chris McCandless; he was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own destiny.
Context?
Like many people, Chris apparently judged artists and close friends by their work, not their life, yet he was temperamentally incapable of extending such lenity to his father.
Context?
This is from the part of Into of the Wild in which Chris finds out about his father's second family, and can't find any way to forgive him.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
Context?
This is an excerpt from Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself."
The average man's a coward.
Context?
This is Colonel Sherburn explaining to the lynch mob that they won't do anything because they're all cowards.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Context?
This is an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau's book Walden from the chapter Where I Lived and What I Lived For.
Significance?
McCandless, like all of us, felt the need for community even though he often denied it. He had found a new community even in Carthage, Alaska.
I had convinced myself for many months that I didn't really mind the absence of intimacy in my life, the lack of real human connection, but the pleasure I'd felt in this woman's company-the ring of her laughter, the innocent touch of a hand on my arm-exposed my self-deceit and left me hollow and aching.
Significance?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
The shadow had now grown so deep, where he was sitting, that he made continual mistakes in what he read, converting all that was gracious and merciful, to denunciations of vengeance and unutterable woe, on every created being but himself
Context?
Significance?
Significance: Richard Digby is converting the "gracious" and "merciful" words of God into denouncements for all except himself. This is metaphorically related to the Puritan's exclusionary tactics.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
"'All right, then, I'll go to hell'-and tore it up... I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a started, I would work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too"
Context?
Significance?
Significance: Huck decides to save Jim, but says he will "go to hell" and "steal" Jim suggesting that he still sees this act as immoral and still sees Jim as property.
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Significance?
To the deserts go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.
Significance?
This epigraph compares McCandless's search for wisdom to that of prophets, pilgrims, and exiles universalizing his experience. McCandless is looking for a higher purpose.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
"And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness... And this was most vexing of all," he noted "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED."
Context?
Significance?
Context: This is a note written by McCandless next to a highlighted passage of Tolstoy's family happiness.
Significance: This is one of McCandless's essential moments of epiphany, as he realizes that a life worth living requires human connection.
He regretted, deeply and bitterly, the moral cowardice that had restrained his words when he was about to disclose the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear of losing her affection, the dread of universal scorn, forbade him to rectify this falsehood.
Significance?
Reuben's cowardice leads to a disregard for Roger Malvin's burial rights, and in turn a rejection of tradition. Reuben's failure to confess his sin is representative of the Puritans belief that they are pure from sin, and his inability to accept his sin leads to a degradation of his spirit.
Here was a boy that was respectable, and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody...
Significance?
This quotes shows that Huck still believes that stealing Jim out of slavery is an immoral act, and that Tom is acting immoral by helping him free Jim. This quote also shows that Huck sees himself as not well brought up, and that he is destined to act immorally while Tom should act morally due to his upbringing.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY?
It was the fatal flaw of humanity, which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The Crimson Hand expressed the ineludible gripe, in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust.
Context?
Significance?
Context: This is an excerpt from The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne which describes the birthmark on Georgiana's cheek.
Significance: The fatal flaw of humanity that Hawthorne is alluding to is mortality, and Aylmer's attempt to remove this flaw from Georgiana suggests he is trying to play God.There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness-a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
Significance?
Henceforth will learn to accept my errors, however great they be.
Significance?
This is one of Chris's final realizations that he jots down in his journal, and shows that he has learned the valuable lesson of acceptance.
But the only thing about him, that could be fixed upon as remarkable, was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought, that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
Significance?
The description of the staff reveals that the man YGB is walking with is the devil, as the staff is described as a snake which alludes to the corruption of Adam and Eve.
Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan."
Significance?
This quote shows Tom's Romantic sentiment, and his need for an adventure. He could easily help Jim escape, but he wishes for this escape to be more difficult without regard for Jim's safety.
I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Significance?