Epigraph: Civil Disobedience and Henry David Thoreau

Epigraph Writing Assignment
Chapter 12: Annandale
Epigraph
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices." - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life In The Woods

Truth vs. Fortune In Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book Into The Wild the main character is Chris McCandless a young man who is extremely smart and who seems to have everything going great in his life. There is only one thing, McCandless is a man that is missing something, in my opinion he was given everything he wanted except one thing that is extremely hard to find a raw experience of life. By that I mean a crude, adventure through the middle of the country with nothing except a backpack experience. Through this novel Krakauer gives an inside look on McCandless's adventure through the Denali Trail, giving us great details on his life, his influences and how he puts that into how he lives and travels. In the novel, Krakauer also uses epigraph's in the beginning of every chapter to show a little of foreshadowing of what the chapter will be influenced by and McCandless's influence of those words in that chapter. The epigraph that I felt had the most connection was Chapter 12 the epigraph read: "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices." - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life In The Woods. Now if we take a look and analyze Chapter 12 It said that McCandless had smoldering anger because of what he found out on his trip west he had revisited his childhood home in El Segundo, in California, and discovered that his father had lived a double life for many years. Chris McCandless had been born to his mother, Billie, while father Walt McCandless was still married to his first wife, Marcia. And two years after Chris was born, Walt McCandless fathered another child with Marcia. The connection I saw with the quote was that Chris's family could have been pictured as "perfect" which in the quote is the wine in abundance, the obsequious attendance but as it was found out the truth was not there because Chris's family was not so perfect and had many lies behind it. Now to put the connection of that epigraph to what inspired McCandless to live his life the way he did was that in the quote it said that the hospitality "was as cold as the ices". We connect that to how he shows such comfort with the new people that he meets because unlike his family and his past they have nothing to hide its raw human-to-human connection, something that he has not experienced much of and when he is offered material possessions from the people he meets he knows that it is purely out of the soul instead of here's a present, go be happy. We switch the topic to find out more about Henry David Thoreau who wrote the epigraph in which this essay is based on we find that he has written many works on his personal opinion in life itself we have the book Walden which is his Experiment on living well that is a book that Chris McCandless was very much influenced by. There is also the essay "Civil Disobedience" which is Thoreau's take on how to follow your conscience and why you should follow your conscious. I recently read "Civil Disobedience" and it showed many good points on how to take a stand and really start to make changes, it made me think over my moral conscience like what is right in the world and what is not. Thoreau was a great writer who wrote mostly on morals and values and how one should integrate those values into his or her life. We close off this essay by giving my opinion on this epigraph, which is that truth should always be given at any time but going over it and reading it several times again makes me think more about how I personally live my life and how we including myself have gotten so used to hearing things and lying has actually become a big part of this world and the raw human-to-human experience is leaving as each generation is growing up because of technology and appliances and things that honestly we don't need. I can really relate to Chris McCandless and Thoreau because they honestly make so much sense to me, sometimes I wish I could go to Bali, Indonesia or Western Australia alone to connect with people who don't know me, my GPA, my materialistic possessions and my SAT scores and just connect. This book has changed my opinion very much and is one of the greatest novels I've read.

Works Cited
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor, 1997. Print.
Lowe, Steve, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Sabuda, and Anne McGrath. Walden. New York: Philomel, 1990. Print.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life In The Woods
Thoreau, Henry David. The Works of Henry David Thoreau. Stamford, CT: Longmeadow, 1995. Print.

Bibliography
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor, 1997. Print.
Lowe, Steve, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Sabuda, and Anne McGrath. Walden. New York: Philomel, 1990. Print.
"Welcome to the Purdue OWL." Purdue OWL: MLA Formatting and Style Guide. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013.
"The Thoreau Reader." The Thoreau Reader. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2013.