Ameris potter (I pledge)
Ms.hiltbrand
7B
21 February 2018
Chris McCandless, A True Transcendentalist.
Transcendentalism is a system developed by Immanuel Kant, based on the idea that, in
order to understand the nature of reality, one must first examine and analyze the
reasoning process that governs the nature of experience. The System has many beliefs
that are held to be true for the people who follow such as self-reliance, confidence,
nonconformity, civil disobedience, the importance of nature, intuition over reason and
living a simple life. These beliefs are called the tenets of transcendentalism. Some
people say that Chris McCandless was just a crazy man who went off into the alaskan
wilderness but we see these true transcendentalism traits in his character throughout
his life with displays of simple lifestyle, civil disobedience, nonconformity, and
self-reliance.
Chris McCandless lived a simple lifestyle with only what he needed, he never
really saw a need for physical possessions in his life. In Into the wild krakauer writes
about chris’ dorm room during his senior year in college saying he “lived off campus in
his bare, spartan room furnished with milk crates and a mattress on the floor. Few of his
friends ever saw his outside of classes. A professor gave him a key for After-hours
access to the library, where he spent much a his free time.” this quote not only shows
the simplicity in chriss physical possessions but also in his social life. True
transcendentalists lived their lives by this, In where I Lived And What I Lived For
Thoreau says “let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand;
instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on a thumbnail.”
explaining how transcendentalists live their lives so simply and do not need to make life
more complex with items which chris followed 100% throughout his life. Some may
argue that chris was not a true transcendentalist because he went to college and lived
in a dorm room with possessions causing him to not have a 100% simplistic lifestyle but
chriss possessions were as minimal as possible in order to live comfortably while he
was going to college which he did in order to please his parents before he could go on
to his odyssey and find what truly pleased him.
It is known that simplicity is not something that is commonly seen in american
society but neither is non-conformity. Chris refused to conform to what the world, other
people, and his government wanted him to be like. Chris shows this in his displays of
civil disobedience throughout the story one of the main ones being that he hunted
without a license to do so. When McCandless was asked if he has a license to hunt he
said, “Hell no… how i feed myself is none of the government's business. F*** their
stupid rules” (Krakauer 6). By refusing to do what the government says he has to and
continuing to hunt illegally, Chris shows that he feels he should not have to follow what
he personally belie...
