Into the Wild

Those who reject materialism and embrace nature are in the minority these days. In past eras, men like Henry David Thoreau and Mark Twain did so and men like George Orwell and Burrhus Frederick Skinner warned of the dangers in not doing so. In Jon Krakauer's account of the life and death of Christopher McCandless, a white college graduate of upper middle-class background, we see that McCandless wholeheartedly rejected materialism and contemporary society and its values, including his family and friends, for his own existence defined in nature. In Into the Wild, Krakauer takes us on the unique and daring, if foolhardy, transformation of McCandless from successful college graduate to a man living off the wilderness with a sack of rice, some borrowed work boots, a rifle and some film. Rechristening himself Alex Supertramp, McCandless' journey into the Alaska wilderness would result in his death. Before he died; however, he lived a life defined on his own terms and through his own values not those of society. As Alex said to one individual who attempted to give him a watch, "I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters," (Krakauer, 7).

In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn experiences a value transformation that goes against society and results in some significant sacrifices for him. In a similar vein, Alex Supertramp must reject the values and customs of the society he

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graphic and concrete," (Egan, 24). We see that McCandless was willing to sacrifice his life to distance himself from the values of contemporary society that he found corrupt and false. "It might be a very long time before I return South. If this adventure proves fatal and you don't ever hear from me again I want you to know you're a great man," he wrote one individual while in nature, (Krakauer, 3). It is readily apparent that both McCandless and Huck Finn (albeit Mark Twain) found the values of their respective eras to be dehumanizing, corrupt, and false. Both McCandless and Huck Finn were willing to sacrifice every relationship they knew in order to abandon the dominant values of their society. Huck believes he will be damned by it and McCandless knows he might die from the choice, but they are both driven by a powerful moral code of their own making. It is such a moral code of one's own making that Henry David Thoreau argues can only be built away from civilization and in the midst of nature in Walden. In Walden, Thoreau provides us with a sometimes hostile and vitriolic examination of the social conventions, values, and norms of mid-19th century American culture. It was a culture in which increasing industrializatio

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