Answer TWO of the
following:
Q1: Technically,
McCandless failed in his quest to live “in the wild” and many Alaskans mocked
him for it. But some, such as professor/explorer Roman Dial, suggests that he
actually succeeded. How is he suggesting we appreciate or understand McCandless’
accomplishment instead of only seeing death?
Q2: Krakauer writes that “In
1992, however, there were no more blank spots on the map—not in Alaska
Q3: At the end of Candide’s
adventures, he is finally bitter and broken until he embraces a new philosophy—“we
must cultivate our garden.” How does McCandless’ final days in Alaska
Q4: According to Krakauer’s
exhaustive research, what really killed McCandless in Alaska
3. Near death McCandless realizes that to be truly happy, he needs other people. He can't just be by himself and expect to live happily. In a way, both Chris and Candide switch philosophies, or rather turn the opposite way of their original ideas. Chris thought he needed to be a lone wolf, surviving off of luck and instinct, and Candide thought that he could just float through life and everything will work out. Chris never got to make anything out of his revelation, but Candide did. If he had survived, Chris might have went back home. Finally worked through his issues and made a better relationship with all the "shallow" people he grew up with. But it's hard to know for sure.
ReplyDelete4. He died from consuming the seeds of a wild potato plant. It inhibited his ability to properly take substenance from what little food he could get until he starved to death. A mistake that only the really lucky or well learned in botany would have avoided, since it's apparently common for edible roots to have poisonous seeds. It's something that a more seasoned traveler might have avoided, but wasn't known as poisonous. The reason so many are divided is because of how ill equipped he was and what we know of his personality. It's much easier to believe he was a foolish idealist than a traveler with bad luck.
Kenia Starry
Yes, Candide gets the revelation and lives to tell about it--and they actually seem the better for it. Maybe Chris, too, would have married, gotten a job, and put down roots...and become a better father for his kids (at least, from his perspective)? Or maybe such endings can only happen in books? Maybe he would have gotten itchy feet again and returned to Alaska, or Carthage, or Oh-My-God Hot Springs? If so, he was eventually going to die somewhere unexpected...maybe it's better now before he had more to leave behind?
DeleteQuestion One:
ReplyDeleteEvery time I see Hamlet, I get so caught up in the poetry and the story that I can't help but hope that *this* time the prince will live. But that's not the point of Hamlet. And that's not the point of Chris McCandless' journey. The way through prince of Denmark dies is important to the story; without it it would not be the same, but it is not *the* story.
There is beauty, satisfaction, and nobility in a simple life--in routines and plain, unmade stick views. McCandless might have come to realize this, if he'd been given more time. He may have taken what he'd learned 'in the wild' and brought it back to civilization. And, if he had, perhaps the critics would label his story a success...But somehow I feel a kind of heartbreaking in picturing Alex Super tramp with a gas bill and a beer gut and a social media account. He died at the climax of his achievements, but at least his story *had* a climax. It didn't continue and continue and continue until it reached an ellipses in some dreary nursing home. I know I'm only 24, and that my views of death will be different when I'm 50. I'm talking about Chris McCandless' death romantically, as if he were a literary character. However, I think there's ample evidence in the book to suggest that Chris would approve.
Question 2:
Every act Chris McCandless performed rejected the authority of others in order to find his own voice. From that perspective alone, it is simple to see why he would throw away his map--what would a map be to him, except another voice saying, "This is what you should do." From the moment we are born, we are surrounded by conflicting directions on 'how to be a person'. The biggest task of our life is to cut our own trail.
However...
Candide and Chris McCandless are similar in that they were always trying to cling to their philosophy, refusing to deviate. But you can become trapped in a philosophy just as McCandless got trapped 'in the wild'. At the culmination of their stories they loosen their hold on what they thought was right, and come to accept the "tend the garden" view.
Great responses...and after all, he IS a literary character: he lived that way and died that way. Maybe at the end he had a sense of dropping the character and learning to become who he actually was ("to call things by their right name"). But we can't know this for sure. But as you say, his life after this adventure might have been very anticlimatic, and might have disappointed him. Indeed, he might have gone back to a normal life for some time, only to have a crisis and run out on a family, a job, simply to find himself again in the wild. Maybe this was almost inevitable, and if not in 1992, then in 95 or 05? I still think it's a tragedy that he died without getting the chance to grow into his philosophy, but he knew this could happen. So he died the way he wanted (even if not when he wanted), and that's almost all we can ask. Why not control death the way we try to control life? IF we can choose our job, our partner, our vacations, why not the manner of our own death?
DeleteI just realized how many typos were in my response. I'm sorry; I typed it up on my phone.
DeleteQ1: Even though he died and failed his quest to love in the wild, he did succeeded in accomplishing leaving society for what he believed in. He went to Alaska to go into the wild, most people who want to travel just think about it and don’t actually go to the place they want. McCandless did exactly what he set out to do and that was go and live in the wild, he may have died but he accomplished something and any person can appreciate that.
ReplyDeleteQ2: Getting rid of the map is his way of showing, I don’t need to know where anything is at ill make my own path all I need is a map that has the basic geographical features to get me through. This is a unique way to look at exploring places in general, it gives us the bare minimum map of the place you’re exploring then anything is possible. To make your own path, your own way of hiking, or going down into a cave, or paddling downstream gives us as people sense of freedom.
Bailey Copeland
Yes, no matter how he died, he still accomplished what he set out to do: have an adventure in the wilds of Alaska. His death doesn't change that, and the lessons he learned while out there remain for us to learn from. True, he could have done it more sensibly, and could have increased his chances of coming out alive, but then we wouldn't have the story--and he might never have gotten around to writing it himself. So part of him would be proud that it lived on after him, even if he had to pass on.
DeleteQ1: People tend to be quite proud of their origins and their environment, and we tend to look down on outsiders, judging them in the same way the Alaskans judged Chris McCandless. For example, Oklahomans tend to be amused by a traveller’s fear of thunderstorms and tornadoes because we’re used to them but “outsiders” are not. Chris was vastly unprepared to go into the “wild”, but like we talked about in class, he wouldn’t have heeded anyone’s advice; he wanted to go on his adventure alone, untouched by society. I don’t think, however, that he failed. He had to have known at some point during his journey that he wouldn’t make it out of Alaska alive. In a way at the end of the book, after the initial fear and dread sets in from him accidentally poisoning himself, he resigns himself to his fate, and seems at peace with everything.
ReplyDeleteQ4: Like in question 1, people (in this case Alaskans) are a little uptight and snooty about their homeland and think they know literally everything about living in that particular environment. Alaskans that look down on and complain about Chris McCandless are probably afraid that other impressionable young men (and maybe women) will read his story and try to brave the wilderness themselves and die. The Alaskans don’t want “outsiders” to think they know everything there is to know about living in “the wild”, even though it isn’t really the wild. In 1992 it certainly isn’t the Last Frontier that Jack London talked about in his novels (Call of the Wild, White Fang, etc.). Part of it, I imagine, is vanity and conceitedness, and part of it is the fear of other young adults following in Chris’s footsteps.
Yes, I think the older you get, the more you resent McCandless for stepping outside the normal bounds and shucking his responsibilities (the ones many of us have long since surrendered to). Also, many people fled to Alaska for similar reasons, but have found a better balance than he did--but it might have taken them years to do it. Nevertheless, they're blaming McCandless for starting his own journey, probably because it reminds them of their own journey and naivete. However, unlike some of them, he doesn't make it out, freezing him in that initial stage. But maybe he learned more than they did even so? And unlike them, he left a story behind for others to learn from (without having to duplicate his journey!).
DeleteQ2: I believe that Chris displayed a unique philosophy is this idea of, "getting rid of the map," as a final display of his unwavering desire to venture "into the wild." In one respect, because maps are manmade, getting rid of his map can be seen as an act of further isolation from civilized society. The other aspect of this that is more applicable to the everyday man is that one can enter the wild almost anywhere. The wild is more a state of mind, a belief that a life should not be confined and limited by the expectations or constructs of society. Capitalism and the American dream may be fulfilling to some, but vain pursuit of these ideas often leaves the individual bound to a mundane, self-seeking lifestyle from which he cannot escape. In other word, in binds people in a cage of their own making and can blind them to the idea that ultimately, life is what we make it.
ReplyDeleteQ3: I think that you could draw a comparison between McCandleuss, Candide, and existentialism. The idea that we must, "work in our garden" was the final philosophy of Candide after he realized that, perhaps the world is not working toward some grand greater good. He seems to finally reject the idea that everything simply works towards a fixed future and that all events are seemingly out of the individuals control. The idea that we must work in the garden seems to suggest a certain autonomy. I think Candid and Mccandleuss realized that ultimately, it is our choices that determine our future. Existentialism is loosely defined as, "a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will." In the end, I think Mccandleuss realized that he has determined his own fate. He has not lived, "for the man," or allowed some notion of obligation to society to keep him from pursing the life he has determined for himself. He has not allowed death to come for him on its own accord, but rather he solidifies his own destiny by his own will to live freely until the end.
Great responses...McCandless didn't seem to read any existentialism, but he would certainly understand and sympathize with it. Candide, too, partakes of this philosophy (a century or so before it came into being), since it also questions whether anything has meaning except the subjective values we place on it. McCandless realized that society's 'good' isn't necessarily the only one, or even the best one. We have an idea that the capitalist narrative is the 'best of all possible worlds,' but McCandless realized it wasn't a one-size-fits-all solution to life. The 'road' offers him a different solution, one that seems to mold to the individual and lead to no one set destination or purpose.
ReplyDelete