Emily Weiss
ENG 2150, Dr. Blankenship
08 March 2016
Paper 1: Rhetorical Analysis of a Cultural Artifact

Dear Dr. Blankenship and Writer’s Group:

“Into the Wild,” a film adaptation documenting the real-life events of a young Christopher McCandless en route to Alaska, exposes its audience to “the other side” of living. Through a story filled with experiences that the average person does not have access to, it gives an in depth feel for what a life free of responsibilities and outer contact would be like: and it may not be as it seems. I was interested in analyzing further the basis and purpose on which the film was created to see how it played out for the audience. I have given my paper the title, The Kind of Adventure You (May Only) Want to Read About, because at the end of the film, after watching what one may encounter in such instances, it is left in the reader’s hands whether or not this type of adventure is what they really want. Is it an achievable dream? Is it a desirable dream?

I am having trouble honing in on exactly what my thesis will be. Read through and tell me what your first impression is and what you gain from my analysis. I would like to improve the layout of my ideas and examples as well. I think I am off to a good start, but I do have to organize.

The Kind of Adventure You (May Only) Want to Read About

Adventure is defined by the stages of human life, where it all begins with a story. From the time that a child learns to read, they are told tales of monsters and princesses and magic in a land so “far far away.” These young minds build a sense of wanderlust and soon enough they start dreaming about the day when they will be the ones living like the characters in their favorite fairytales. As time goes on- and it always does- and those children grow up, life gets in the way of their big dreams only to be replaced by the great responsibilities of being an adult. Over the course of a lifetime, then, those crazy ambitions are often forgotten and abandoned behind in those stories we were once told as kids. It takes a specific opportunity and fearlessness that most people don’t have to find adventure. People spend their lives lusting over dreams that they never pursue. But in May of 1992, when Christopher McCandless graduated from Emory University, he saw he had the perfect chance for adventure and he took it. He surprised everyone.

He was just a student at the time. Walking off the stage with a diploma in hand, Christopher had high hopes ahead of him. He was educated, intellectual, driven, and ready to move on. His next step, or so his parents thought, was to enroll in graduate school at Harvard University. His future was a vision of success. Though expectations on him were high, Chris was capable of filling them. Growing up in a very fortunate family, Chris had access to most of what he could have ever wanted. He had lived a fairly privileged life- at least in regards to finances. Despite his parents’ affluence, though, his life behind closed doors fell quite short of a happy one. As just a child, Chris witnessed and hid his sister Carine from the constant arguments his parents had. Things got physical very quickly. It wasn’t until when he learned his father, married twice, had him and Carine with their mother while still with to first wife, that a chord was struck inside of him. Everything he had known up until that point now seemed insignificant. At that point in life, his entire worldview changed. Things had been hard for him but they were never this unsettling. It was about this time that Chris made the decision to leave. With little to him but a loose plan and the bag he carried behind him, he escaped all his problems as soon as he could. It was Christopher’s time for adventure. He changed his name, abandoned his car and belongings, donated $24,000 in savings, and with a single goal in mind, Alexander Supertramp took off. It was only six words on which his story was established and six words that influenced the title of his quasi-memoir. Follow Chris, then, as “I now walk into the wild.”

Based off of the 1996 novel inspired by the real life events in the life of Christopher McCandless, an American hiker who drove through and eventually went by foot across the United States to his final destination of Fairbanks, Alaska, the film adaptation of “Into The Wild” recreates Chris’s journey, well-documenting the work he had to endure to make it all the way to the Last Frontier and the many people he met on his way. As described in Entertainment Weekly, “The beauty of Into the Wild, which Penn has written and directed with magnificent precision and imaginative grace, is that what Christopher is running from is never as important as what he’s running TO” (Gleiberman). We know he wanted to escape from his parents, and to escape the bounds society created around him. But what was he running to? This is the big question; and we’re the ones who are meant to find the answer. With such a heavy load to work with, Sean Penn made many decisions both as a businessman and as an artist to share McCandless’s experience in all it’s vividity as the audience can walk almost alongside him on the open roads and watch the wilderness unfold for themselves. To say the least: it’s the adventure we’d all been looking for. Penn knew that, and he knew just how to catch attention. It’s such “individuals who understand rhetorical analysis and act to make change can have a tremendous influence on their world” (Carroll). This video was created with a purpose to challenge, to inquire, to provoke the viewers and give them a deeper understanding into the rare and wonderfully developed mindset that people like Christopher have.

First and foremost, here’s a film that will test your expectations and actual preparedness for adventure. To get “lost” in the great unknown, the outdoors, is enticing; there’s something so luring about waking up in a place unknown surrounded only by the nature and trees that lay their roots before you. To follow a road with no limits or structure and without knowing when you’ll get there seems the closest to full-fledged freedom as one can possibly get. “Into The Wild” is made for the individuals too engrossed in their daily routines to break from their own beaten down paths and go out on a new one. It’s made for those who don’t have the means or the motive to explore but still want a taste of that unscathed freedom. This film will push those whose knowledge of the world is limited to the few miles they’ve traveled through their entire lives. Supertramp’s story provides a mental journey where a physical one is just not feasible. Based off of self-discovery, off of trivial-sickness, off of the need for a break from the norms of society, men and women, old enough to understand the true costs and entailments of adventure, can get one straight from a screen. With wide shots, long landscapes, and an emphasis on scenery, one obtains a very clear and realistic picture of what such a journey would be like through Christopher’s eyes.

With all of the drama and excitement that “Into The Wild” has to offer to those who are looking for that, there is even more to the story that can be drawn. Not everyone dreams of leaving comfort for some bigger and greater adventure. In the same sense it is important to remember that one of Chris’s greatest motivations was to breach responsibilities and live away from the stress of human life. Adventure came along with having to get there. As much as freedom is our God-given right as humans in society, our freedoms are limited to a significant extent by responsibilities we carry as working, living, functioning beings in our communities. With the way we live now there is never a shortage of things to worry about; money, school, work, other people, and so on. Through an deeper understanding of Christopher and his motives for his escape to Alaska, we are reminded how the pressures of his family as well as the pressures that their money put on him played a huge role in his reasons for leaving. Chris learned at a young age that money cannot buy happiness: a concept most people consider but do not fully comprehend. He was fortunate enough to know what it means to have money and to realize that it could not fulfill his needs. So, as we do with anything that does not help us: he let it go. It would be nice to have the ability to relieve oneself of the financial burdens of living. It’s too easy to get caught up in what’s most meaningless. In a complete cleanse, Chris burned his money and his past at the start of his trail and did not look back. It was a new awakening for himself, by himself.

Living in complete isolation changes a person. When you’re completely on your own, you realize things about yourself that you would not have noticed otherwise. The busy lives we’re surrounding by get distracting. People often forget to live consciously in the moment, too preoccupied with the future and how to prepare for it. When you’re alone, though, you have no other choice but to reflect: you reflect on your choices, on the people in your life. In the midst of it all, it can seem that other people are the main cause of all of our problems. If that’s true, then why not just get up and get away from everyone? Wouldn’t the world would be a better place? Unfortunately it’s not that simple. With no one else and no one else’s feelings to take into consideration, Chris still faced problems, and he had to do it the hard way: by himself. Able to see clearly on the outside, he realized that in life, “happiness is only real when shared.” It’s okay to want to be on our own sometimes. But we cannot deny the strong bond that we develop with those closest to us and how it helps us move on. People keep each other sane.  

Without even having put our lives on hold for an adventure of our own, “Into The Wild” satisfies our wants and needs for such a getaway. People crave the mystery and solidarity of the deep outdoors over the problems they have at home, yet in doing so they also become blind to the fact that the wilderness comes with its own set of problems. Christopher was able to break from the regular emotional pain and stress back home, but on the road he faced more physical and mental hardship than ever before. He had to hitchhike, meet and leave people he met and really came to like, find scraps of food to eat, and he struggled. After just a few weeks in Alaska, he accidentally poisoned his already weak body with what he thought were edible berries. Chris was left in the last moments of his life fighting for it, for all he had worked up to, and he died in the way in which he started, a way in which most of us fear: alone.

(Still considering how to formulate my conclusion. Will do once full essay is edited).

 

Works Cited

Carroll, Laura Bolin.

“Http://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/eng2150sp16kta/files/2016/02/BolinCarroll_BackpacksV
Briefcases.pdf.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010.
N. pag. Print.

Gleiberman, Owen. “Into the Wild | EW.com.” Entertainment Weekly’s EW.com. Entertainment
Weekly, 19 Sept. 2007. Web. 05 Mar. 2016.

Into The Wild. Dir. Sean Penn. Prod. Sean Penn. Perf. Emile Hirsch. River Road Entertainment
Square One C.I.H. Linson Film, 2007. Film.

Scott, A. O. “Everybody’s a Critic. And That’s How It Should Be.” The New York Times. The
New York Times, 30 Jan. 2016. Web. 05 Mar. 2016.