Individualism In Into The Wild

The Transcendentalists, a free-spirited group of writers who believed in individualism, intuition, and the goodness of humanity, would agree that nature can answer one’s questions and has the ability to clear one’s mind. In contrast, Transcendentalists believe that technology or a city’s atmosphere can cloud or distracts one’s mind. In the movie Into the Wild directed by Sean Penn in 2007, Chris McCandless leaves Atlanta, Georgia and heads West. He destroys all evidence of his existence, like his driver's license and Social Security, and he escapes from his self-destructive parents in order to achieve his version of ultimate freedom. As he makes his way to the West, he meets a hippy couple, Rainey and Jan Burres, he works at a wheat farm for Wayne Westerberg, he meets a young teenage girl, Tracy Tatro, and finally, he meets an old, lonely, and stubborn man, Ron Franz, who is the last person to help Chris before he begins his ultimate Alaskan adventure. Although Chris fails to exemplify self-reliance and individualism, one of the Transcendentalist beliefs, Chris excels in the Transcendentalist beliefs of nature and simplicity.
Chris McCandless fails to rely on his own resources and self while he journeys to the West coast and loses his own identity, too. When Chris arrives in California, he finds a friendly
hippy couple, Rainey and Jan Burres, that helps him with his journey to Alaska and provides him with food and shelter. The Transcendentalists disagrees with Chris action in accepting help from Rainey and Jan Burres he fails to “live free and uncommitted” (Thoreau, Walden). Living free and uncommitted enables one to create a routine, which enables one to invest interest in materialistic items. After Chris leaves to the hippy couple, he starts a routine of getting random jobs to earn money for his upcoming trip. He begins to “fall into a particular [routine]” by working at the wheat farm for Wayne Westerberg, and he later meets up with Rainey and Jan Burres again (Thoreau, Walden). As Chris works random jobs, travels from place to place, and sleeps in trains, he begins to get this identify of society would consider a hippy, and he, also, changes his name to Alex. By gaining this societal image of being a hippy or a nomad instead of being Chris, Transcendentalist would agree that “society everywhere is [a] conspiracy against the manhood of its members,” like Chris (Emerson, “Self-Reliance”). He loses his individualism and his real name by not using his own self-reliance and conforming to society as being a nomad. Chris ignores the Transcendentalist belief of self-reliance by accepting help from others instead of using his resources, loses his own name, and his own identity by being the social image of a hippy. In contrast, Chris excels in spending time with nature and living simple.
By spending the majority of his adventure in nature and learns to live with what he has on his back, Chris exceeds this Transcendental principle. While Chris is walking in the California woods, he sees deer, climbs over the large fallen oaks, and hear a river, which purifies his eyes in seeing the beauty of nature. As he made his way through the woods, Chris becomes “a transparent eyeball” (Emerson, Nature). Transcendentalists believe that the way one sees nature is equivalent to the way God sees his creations; the calm effect nature has on one also can allow one to see the beauty of nature more clearly. Chris takes advantage of the beauty of nature to distract him society and learns to simplify his life by doing this. In Chris’s last two years of his life wandering and traveling the earth, he possesses “no phone, no pool, no pets, [and] no cigarettes,” which to Chris is the definition of “ultimate freedom” (Krakauer, “How Christopher McCandless Lost His Way in the Wilds”). Without those items, Chris is able to live more in the present and appreciate the beauty of his surroundings; he is able to see the world is whole different way with those distractions. Chris begins to simplify his life after his car is destroyed in a flood in Arizona. He leaves his car, burns his money, and lives with essentials items in his bookbag. Chris excels to exemplify in the Transcendental principle of simplicity because Transcendentalists believed “our life is frittered away by detail” (Thoreau, Walden). Humans waste their lives on unessential things that do not matter and living simple impedes one’s life from being wasted. Living simple benefits one’s life through being able to see the beauty of nature in a whole new, undistracted point of view.
Although Chris is unsuccessful in demonstrating the Transcendentalist principles of self-reliance and individualism, he succeeds in seeing the beauty of nature and living simple.
By changing his name and starts to conform to society by being a nomad, Chris loses his own true identity. Chris also ignores to use his own resources and uses other people to help him along his great Alaskan adventure. Chris is successful in ignoring modern technology and pleasures to see the beauty of nature in a different viewpoint, and he focuses on the vital things of life instead. Living in a society where being a conformist is as easy as looking up something on the
internet, it can be difficult to express one’s true self. As the world keeps modernizing, individualism move farther away from nature and living simple.