The Accidental Asian & Into the Wild
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In Into The Wild and The Accidental Asian, authors Jon Krakauer and Eric Liu respectively provide us with stories of young men in search of an alternative to contemporary society. In Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer provides an account of the journey into the wilderness of a young man named Christopher McCandless. McCandless is a graduate of Emory College, who after graduation abandons all material possessions and hitchhikes his way to Alaska. McCandless changes his name to Alex Supertramp, gives his savings of $25,000 away to charity, burns the belongings in his wallet, and abandons his car, family, and friends. He walks into the wilderness north of Mount McKinley and is found dead from starvation by a hunter four months later, inside an abandoned bus. Eric LiuÆs The Accidental Asian provides LiuÆs own account of his attempt to assimilate into American, i.e., White, society as a second generation Asian. In both of these stories we see that contemporary society both shackles and constrains these two young men. In the case of Supertramp, his journey ends in failure and death. In the case of Liu, his efforts to assimilate still leave him with a number of questions about the nature of race and ethnicity and the way in which American society narrowly defines them. Eric Liu is an American success. He is a graduate of Yale University, won numerous awards for his abilities in science, wrote speeches for President Clinton and attended Harvard School of Law. However, Liu
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are a reality for Asians who do reconnect to their heritage.
The painstaking journey for his cultural as well as his personal identity in Eric LiuÆs work is not that much different than the arduous journey of Christopher McCandless, from the isolation of the Mojave desert to his trek into the wilderness in Alaska. For McCandless never felt that contemporary and materialistic society had much to offer him that provided him with fulfillment or related to his identity. At various points in his journey, strangers offer him food, supplies, and other items, but McCandless rejects them all. At one point, when he is tries to give his watch and spare cash to the man who gives him a ride, McCandlessÆ explanation about time is something that might be straight out of ThoreauÆs Walden. For when he offers the man the watch, McCandless reasons, ôI donÆt want to know what time it is. I donÆt want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that mattersö (Krakauer, p. 7).
While many argued that McCandless had a death wish, in fact he was an educated and intelligent young man who found no comfort in the hectic and materialistic orientation of contemporary U.S. society. He intends to feed himself off of berries and others edibles, and
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2029
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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