Paper 1: EDITED Rhetorical Analysis of a Cultural Artifact

 

Dear Dr. Blankenship and Writer’s Group:

 

After leaving my paper alone for a while, coming back to it I had a whole new thought process and perspective to use that actually helped me create my stronger thesis. My thesis, in a sentence, is based off of the last few words that Christopher said/wrote in the film, “happiness is only real when shared.” Using this as a base for my own ideas I came up with the root idea that “life is not meant to be lived alone.” I grow from this idea to talk about how Christopher tried to get away from the hate-filled and standardized life he thought was ahead of him by losing himself in the wild. What I hope people take away from my analysis and what I took away from the film was that though along the way life may seem boring, life may seem too predictable, there’s no “great-escape” that will fix that. There’s no “absolute truth and happiness” that we find on our own that we can’t discover in our current state. We all experience phases in our life and change may be a good option but it should not be taken to the extreme that Christopher McCandless took it to. We can never just drop our problems because they’ll come along anywhere. You don’t have to run away to find yourself. This adventure may sound like a dream but “Into The Wild,” through the ups and the downs, shows how unrealistic it is. I hope my improvements are clear.

 

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

Sometimes life can be boring. When we start to consider all of the possibilities and excitement that is somewhere outside of our reach, it can become an obsession to try and live that wonderful adventure. Christopher McCandless, of “Into the Wild,” felt especially trapped by this common feeling of monotony and could not bare a boring future like everyone else. He took his desperation to the extreme. What he did not realize, though, was adventure doesn’t have to mean taking outrageous risk. Adventure shouldn’t be an escape, as it was for Chris. He thought his problems stemmed from society, from the people around him. He went on his own in hopes to find a happiness somewhere outside of his home life. What he really finds, though, is that life is not meant to be lived alone. Thankfully we do not need to make the same mistakes to figure this out.

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. He feared life as it was could never bring him the happiness he seeked. With little to him but a loose plan and the bag he carried behind him, he escaped all of his problems as soon as he could. He changed his name, abandoned his car and belongings, donated $24,000 in savings, and with a single goal in mind, now Alexander Supertramp took off. “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. At the start it seems as if he lost all hope in society, all faith in humanity as a whole. This explains why he broke off. But through the few encounters Christopher has on the road, he sees the good in people, the good he thought was lost. As described in Entertainment Weekly, “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? He was running towards an adventure that was never really out there. Only when he hits obstacle after obstacle does the audience begin to understand the holes in and the irrationality of his plan. And as he slowly starves to death in Alaska, the place he had only fantasized about for months prior, the real dream becomes more obvious. Without his family, without friends, without anyone to help him, Chris dies a painful death from poison. His parents find out only when his body is found some time later. There goes his adventure.

First and foremost, here’s a film that will test your expectations of real 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 who feel stuck, for the individuals who have always wondered what it may be like to take off as he did and beat their own path. It’s made for those who salivate for taste of that unscathed freedom. This film will erase the hopes and dreams of people: in a good way. Supertramp’s story provides an example of how, though being alone and finding your way as he did may seem like the ultimate adventure, it is unrealistic and does not necessarily end in absolute truth and happiness. In fact, the only thing we are left certain of is life is meant to be spent with our loved ones. Being born into a crappy situation does not mean you have to live with one the rest of your life. Chris did not realize this until it was too late, but we don’t have to. 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. The good, the bad, and the worst of it.

With all of the drama and excitement that “Into The Wild” has to offer it is still clear, especially by the end, that Chris’s expectations were not sensible. 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. An adventure was supposed to come out on the way of getting 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’s a great theory. But life doesn’t usually work out this way.

There was some positive that comes out of this story. 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 other people weren’t his problems. 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” grounds our expectations of what such a getaway would look like. 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. In fact, you can never fully escape problems. But problems are what help us grow and build as people. 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 himself. 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. Imagine how much more he could have contributed to society if he had survived his great excursion. In what may have been his last words, Chris learned the real meaning behind our existence. When it all comes down to it, “happiness is only real when shared.”

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.

 

Emily Weiss

05.26.2016