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Into the Wild Essay
The Pursuit of Happiness
Every individual is unique. One’s unique identity is composed by their own beliefs, values and views. Many individuals wish to obtain a state of happiness. Happiness is not an unreachable goal since each person has their own individual definitions of true “happiness”. Sean Penn uses Chris McCandless’ life story to show the idea of what it means to be human in the movie Into the Wild. A person will try to pursue certainty and hopefulness because of particular events that happened in the person’s life.
Relationships can be damaged by the findings of the reality of a situation. The protagonist’s parents are highly ambitious individuals who place the value of worldly goods above everything else. After graduating from high school Chris goes on a trip to California where he visits with all friends and finds out that his father had another family before his sister and he were born. The emotions triggered by this discovery overwhelm Chris so he did not share his findings with his parents. “Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness… [he wanted the] truth”, something that his parents never gave him. The trust that Chris had in his parents was broken by this revelation, resulting in him believing that he isn’t worthy of love. The only reason Chris found out the lies and secrets of his family was because he choose to deeply explore his family history.
Freedom for Chris came from the findings about his parents. Chris hated the society he was in, he saw it as a world where the ignorant are in power and the well-educated intellectual has to watch his words since those words can have disastrous consequences. Chris sees people as prisoners, living unhappy lives and putting up with the confines of their lives, never wanting to break out of a life of security and behaviour akin to following the heard because all of this can give a person a fake sense of peace of mind. Chris saw the only way that he could escape those feelings of

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