Each time a section of reading is assigned, go back to the book and identify a connection. Write about those connections and post those reflections here. Write about specific lines, scenes, incidents, and/or details in the book and their connections to the ideas of Transcendentalism and/or specific quotes from the Thoreau/Emerson packet.
* SO, for chap. 1-3 you should have one post. For chap 4-7, you should have one post
MAIN TRANSCENDENTALIST VALUES
The importance of living simply and as close to nature as possible.
The importance of living in the moment, keeping the senses aware of the present moment.
The need to get rid of the distractions in life that take away from our ability to live mindfully and meaningfully.
The value of non-conformity – questioning authority and traditional ways of thinking.
The quest for true self-knowledge – creating time and space for honest introspection.
The rejection of the materialism and traditional measures of success.
The importance of individual conscience vs. society’s laws or expectations.
Spirituality means connecting with the divinity in all living things.
Transcendentalism is when you give up all of the junk in you life and focus on the most important things in you life. When you get down to the "bear necessities of life". Sorry. Had to quote "Jungle Book" But in all seriousness, transcendentalism is when you step back and look at your life and ask "What are the most important items in my life? What am I doing with my life? What and who could I not live without?" Transcendentalism is sticking to what you believe in, what your morality says is right and not necessarily what the law says is right.
ReplyDeleteEvan Goodspeed
ReplyDeleteQuote "Gallien asked whether he had a hunting license. "Hell, no, Alex scoffed. "How i feed myself is none of the government's business. Fuck their stupid rules.""[page 6]
I think that quote relates to the transcendentalist value "The need to get rid of the distractions in life that take away from our ability to live mindfully and meaningfully."
Alex is stating or saying that the government is running their lives and/or ruining it. That he is going to get rid of the governments control and live a free life in the wild, to live the way that he wants too. He is also saying that we the people of the county do not need stupid rules to make are lives better or safer to live.
Taylor Nielsen
ReplyDeleteTranscendentalism is giving up reality to fulfill your wants and needs. Chris does give up reality to fulfill his wants. He wants to leave civilization and live in the wilderness which is exactly what he is going to do. "He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the end of the Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and live off the land for a few months" (Page 4). One value of transcendentalism is living in the moment, Chris is doing exactly that. He is going day by day and figuring out how to survive on his own for a few months. Chris is living the life of transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism is sticking to your morals and focusing your life on what really matters to you as a human being. You really are on a quest for self-knowledge, This is exactly what Chris does. He gives all his money away to charity and cuts everything out of his life except for the things that will make him see himself in a different way. The wild. He changes his entire life style and really shows the value of non-conformity. He goes against what everyone expects him to do and tries out a whole new lifestyle of transcendentalism.
ReplyDeleteJesika Thomas
ReplyDeleteTranscendentalism is basically the idea of an individual re-grounding them self to the simplicity of life and earth. "The importance of living simply and as close to nature as possible." It is shown in the book that Chris wants to practice transcendentalism when he rejects most of the man-made tools that Gallien offers him. He wants to use nature as his tool for survival shown when he asks Gallien about "the kind of small game that live in the country, the kinds of berries he could eat". He will find his own way to survive, not using the tools that would keep him safe but push him farther from nature.
Transcendentalism, driven from the word transcend meaning "to go beyond", means to go beyond any distresses and live life in all it's simplicity. Chris McCandless is the best example of this you could find. When he says "I don't want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters." It really shows those values. He really just wanted to go live life as he wanted in all of it's beauty. This very much shows how he wanted to get rid of the things in life that are distractions and get in the way of him living his life meaningfully and how he wants to live it. I think he is unique and brave. And not enough people have the traits to follow transcendenalism like Chris did.
ReplyDeleteRachel Walsh
ReplyDeleteIn the Thoreau/Emerson packet it says, “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his own portion; that the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on the plot of ground which is given to him.” Basically everything you get, you get for your own. It is about what you put into it. Your genius!Be proud and do it. Only you can make your life better. Chris McCandless fits this quotes exactly. When society tells him to take these pair of boots, take this coat, take all this food and gear, or you will not survive, he does not go along with it. He does not wants civilization to give him anything, he wants to get everything for himself and if that is not good enough, then so be it. He is his own person and when people tell him to do something he refuses. Also, he does not limit himself. He gives himself little gear and food and tries to survive off of it. Not many people can do this, however he wants to try it and not listen to others. He wants to do this even is others think and try to convince him that he is going to die. Others thought, “he’d probably get hungry quick and just walk out to the highway. That’s what any normal person would do” (7). However, he is no normal person. He does not want to go back to civilization saying he failed, he ended up dieing to preserve his beliefs and not have others assumptions of him be right. He wants to prove others wrong by doing the extraordinary and he sure does. He is a success to himself and others by not limiting himself and not conforming to society.
Transcendentalism is being different and living your life how you perscieve it. Chris definatley makes this happen for him in the book. In the packet, quote #13 talks about not wasting your life and instead doing something worthwhile. Chris thinks about this in his own way, and wants to strive and live out his life the way he thinks is best. Even though he worked very hard in the beginning and is basically throwing it away, he is living his life to the fullest with lots of adventures. He doesn't want anything or anybody getting in his way of this happening. He is trying something new and wants to see how he is able to accomplish it. In the book on page 6 he says, "I'll be fine with what I got." He is very determined to not seek any help and just be by himself with nothing else. Chris is living his own transcendentalism and his own lifestyle because he wants to be on a search to find himself out in the real world called nature.
ReplyDeleteayia abdelamgid
ReplyDeleteTranscendentalism can mean, getting rid of anything that can distracted you in life, things that take time away from your life. In the book, when Chris gets a rid from Jim Gallian, a man Chris meets.Gallian drops him off at the destination he wanted to be dropped off at, Chris insisted on giving gallian everything he had, his watch, eighty-five cents i lose change, his comb. Chris says "I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know what day it is or where I am, " Chris says this because he doesn't want anything to distract him, he doesn't need anything from society to live.
Sahar Shakeel
ReplyDeleteTranscendentalism is when people choose to live your life differently on how the normal society does. They would wish to be something more than an average citizen and live by their own choices. In Walden, Thoreau write about his decision about living differently by his own way, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” This quote explains that when his decision to live in the woods, was to live by doing with his own hands. He wishes to live “in the moment” and not rushed like how society is. In Into the Wild, Chris left home and decided to live in the woods instead of having a successful career in society. This makes Chris a transcendentalist because what he chooses to do is something different then how the average person would choose his life.
Sahar Shakeel
ReplyDeleteTranscendentalism is all about slowing down and not wasting your life doing something you do not what to do. In Walden, there was a quote that says, “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?” This quote is asking the readers about our rushed life, about how we can’t seem to slow down and not being able to see a different way to our life. If you “live with such hurry” you won’t be able to enjoy your life as much and soon, your life would be wasted. On page 57, of Into the Wild, Chris wrote a letter to Franz about living out in the wild. An observation Chris made was “...for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day.”. This means that he noticed that people in society tend to follow the same routine every day and wishes to not do anything different. Both Chris and Thoreau wishes to see people slowing down to their life and not wasting it on a life they don’t want, and they should be able to be brave enough to change it themselves.
Transcendentalism is the giving up of material possessions and society's rules to focus on what's happening in life now and to succeed with your own personal standards. An example of when this happens in the book is when Chris McCandless tells his parents he doesn't want them o give him a new car or pay for his college tuition to law school. He says this because he already had a car that he loved and that worked fine for him and that his parents had already paid for him to go to school for writing and that's what he wanted to do. This is an example of transcendentalism because Chris felt successful and content with what he had already done with his life.
ReplyDeleteTranscendentalism is starting to live the life you chose not caring the all rules believing what you want to believe. "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” This quote i think best explains the meaning of this. The people's life their own life. they have knowledge about themselves and the world around them. People can trust themselves to be their own authority on what is right.
ReplyDeleteRachel Walsh
ReplyDeleteTranscendentalism means to be yourself without subject to change of what other people want you to be. In the quote by Emerson it says, “It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” This explains the character, Chris McCandless perfectly. Chris is forced to get a job to obtain money for his trip to Alaska. On the job they force him to wear socks and shoes, which Chris hates to do. Personally, he likes to just wear shoes without socks. However he accepts the rules and goes along with the opinions of the boss. Right at the end of his shirt, though, he takes off his socks immediately. “ Kind of like a statement, to let us know we didn't own him”(40). This shows Chris’s loyalty and respect to others opinions at the time as keeping his own morals and opinions. Very few people have the courage to stand up to others, most people just go along with what position s of authority tell them to do, thereby changing the person they are. Chris is not one of those people;he is unique. He listens and respects his boss, but he does not change the person he is just because his boss told him to do something. Chris never changed the person he always was, he is just as pure as the day he was born. He had a dream and he followed it. He was happy with every decision he made in life, which is something very few people could say.
Zeynep Balto
ReplyDeleteI saw a quote in the one of the magazine that i was reading the quote was saying that "Believed in living closer to nature." And when i saw that i remembered Chris McCandless's life that he chose it by himself. In the book page63 the quote that Borah talks about Chris says "He acted like it was hard for him to be around people. I just figured that was because he'd spent so much time by himself" I believe that this quote explain the quote that i saw in the magazine. He likes being by himself in the nature rather than being with the people. His life is different than the society's life. That shows us most of the people don't live the life with transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism, is when you choose to live your life freely, and living happily doing what you want and being crazy, instead of being bound by the chains of what is expected of you. To follow manners and behave in a way that makes you feel constricted. On page 31, a man named James Joyce wrote about his impression of Chris, which he knew as Alex. James wrote, "He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was- willful and wild hearted." On page 64 Chris talks about how his parents saying that they are irrational, oppressive, disrespectful, and insulting;he also talked about how he was going to cut them out of his life. Cutting these irrational, oppressive, disrespectful, and insulting things from our lives is the main factor for transcendentalism
ReplyDeleteTaylor Nielsen
ReplyDeleteTranscendentalism is getting rid of distractions in your life to live a meaningful and life. Chris meets Ronald Franz along the way of his journey. They become close and Chris realizes that Franz deserves more in his life. Chris writes him a letter saying, "You do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it" (58). Chris pushes Franz to experience transcendentalism. Franz takes his advice and camps out in his RV in the same spot that Chris did. From then on Franz lives a meaningful life that he deserved without any distractions
A transcendentalist is to live of on your own and to get rid of any distractions in your life, Not living the same way as others are living, and not using things that people use on a daily basics. On Page 30, while Chris is going off on his adventure he meets a woman named Jan Burres, she said " He had a book about plants with him, and he was using it to pick berries, collecting them in a gallon milk jug....." when Jan offered him a ride Chris said to her, " hes surviving on edible plants he identified from the book... like he was proud of it." Chris didn't need society's money to eat, all he did was look up some edible berries on his book and looked for them while he was going on his journey.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Canavan
ReplyDeleteIn Chapters 1-3 Chris shows Transcendentalist values when he burns all his money and abandons his car. This connects to the value of rejecting materialism. To him the money symbolizes his life being controlled by someone else, he doesn't want to be told what to do so he burns it so he can make his own decisions. When he abandons his can it show his need to be close to nature. The car represents the barrier that most people have between a "normal" life and a meaningful life.
Andrew Canavan
ReplyDeleteIn chapters 4-7 Chris demonstrates Transcedentalist values by going to life in the desert away from any towns.This connects to the value of living life without distractions that interfere with ones ability to life mindfully and meaningfully. To Chris, the town symbolizes materialism and the exact opposite of how he wants to life. That's why he wants to be alone. Another reason he might want to be alone is so he can strive for self knowledge without the distractions and control of normal life and authority.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCarissa Jesmain
ReplyDeleteAn example of a transcendentalist belief is that of living in the moment and being aware of what’s happening in your life now as opposed to what already happened or what’s going to happen in the future. An example of this belief in chapters 4-7 is on pages 56 and 57 when Chris sends a letter to Franz trying to convince him that the best way to live is in the moment. One quote that really stuck out to me in this letter was when Chris said, “The joy in life comes from our encounter with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” This quote stood out to me as transcendentalism because he is basically saying that the beauty in life comes from what you don’t see coming.
Evan Goodspeed
ReplyDeleteA transcendentalist is to live with nature and to live your life in every moment every single day as its your last. To live your life in the fullest, that's what I think a transcendentalist is. Chris shows this throughout the book when he went to live in the wild which is nature. Chris also takes many risks throughout his journey when he lives next to a desert. When he canoed down the river and into Mexico. And his final journey into Alaska where he lost his life.
In chapters 4-7, Chris is a transcendentalist and is living his own life in nature, and how he sees it.Sometimes this can deal with getting rid of distractions in your life to live it with nature. He keeps being this type of person throughout the book and meets a new friend Franz. Chris tries to convince Franz the importance of expanding your horizons to live a happy life. You have to try and you will succeed. On page 57-58 Chris says, "It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it." You have to believe in yourself and know that life is worth living for. There are so many mysteries and gifts life has, that being a transcendentalist, you are able to seek these moments. Chris is a mentor to Franz and helps him realize what is important.
ReplyDeleteJesika Thomas
ReplyDeleteOne of the transcendentalist ideals is The rejection of materialism. Chapter four there is a flash flood that ruins Chris's car engine. Chris easily decides to abandon the car all together after considering the troubles that would come with contacting the authorities. Chris feels exhilarated after this seemingly unfortunate turn of events. He sees it as an opportunity to rid himself of all his material objects. He buries most of his things like his rifle and sets fire to the rest of his money. This shows Chris's rejection of materialism.
For chapters 4-7, there seems to be a different transcendentalism focus. It seems Chris focus's more on the idea of getting rid of distractions in life that take away from our ability to live meaningfully and peacefully. It seems that at this point in the book he is more accepting of people's help, earlier he would refuse peoples help by objects, money etc. Now he is letting people help him and using money and he said he wished that he had not given him the money because now he needs it to live. Though he has accepted help form other people, he seems to be refusing people from being in his life, he rejected Fronz's offer, maybe out of fear or whatever it is, but maybe he thinks that by having people in his life like fronz and how fronz wants Chris in his life, he won't be able to live meaningfully and how he wants.
ReplyDeleteAngelo Cavallaro
ReplyDeleteChris McCandless tries to live his trip to Alaska as a Transcendentalist. Thoreau, a philosopher said, "... An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest... I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand..." In chapters 1-3 it talks about how Chris burned his money and abandoned his car to hitch hike across the country. This shows that he wants to live a simpler life without all of the complications or "affairs."
Tucker Sheely
ReplyDeleteAn idea of a transcendentalist that connects to Chris McCandless is the importance of living simply and as close to nature as possible. Chris does not want want to buy things with the money that he has, that money is worthless to him, which is why he burns his money after his car got swamped. Chris wants to find food for himself and try to live that way instead of having food handed to him for every meal. On page 30 when he is walking alongside the road two people in a van pulled over and saw Chris picking berries and putting them in a gallon milk jug. They told him to get in where they learned what he was doing. "Said he'd been surviving on edible plants he identified from the book." Chris by surviving on plants and berries from the wild is trying to live his life as closely to nature as he possibly could.
Chris McCandless truly believes in transcendentalism, in the beginning of chapter 4 on page 29, Chris deserts his beloved datsun and burned all his money. This really connects to transcendentalism since it shows how Chris really felt the ideas of living simply. He believed in it, he dropped everything that wasnt necessary and walked off and really began his journey. Also in the text, Krakauer says "In a gesture that would have done both Thoreau and Tolstoy proud... One Hundred twenty-three dollars in legal currency was reduced to ash and smoke." This really displays Chris as always wanting to be like Thoreau or Tolstoy, with his competitive nature, he felt like he always had to one up them and carry transcendentalism even further than they could.
ReplyDeleteTucker Sheely
ReplyDeleteThe Transcendentalist idea of “The need to get rid of the distractions in life that take away from our ability to live mindfully and meaningfully” is present in Into the Wild. After Chris graduated from college, he felt overwhelmed by and sick of everything in his life and wanted to get away from all the distractions in his life. “At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence “ (Krakauer 22). This quote connects to this Transcendentalist idea because Chris wanted to escape from his life and go get lost for a while, without people and where he could have no distractions. The idea shows that people need to get rid of distractions in life in order to really live happily and to live with a purpose and to be stress-free. Chris wants this kind of life and is ready to get rid of his distraction and become at peace.
Radine Anne Nieva
ReplyDeletechapter 1-3
Transcendentalist means the rejection of the materialism. Rejecting the people who offer their things they know you will need it to survive. Exchanging things that the people brought for you into hardship in gaining the things you like. In the book, Chris rejected a lot of things given by the people he met during his journey and his parents. He donated all his money to OXFAM, carrying a little money but soon he burned his remaining money. Rejecting the offer that his parents offered to him to buy him a brand new car for his graduation. That why thus he need a new car? That he don’t need a new car. He is happy with the car he bought with his own money. Earning his own money to pay for his car and to pay his tuition fee for college. But his parents insisted to pay his tuition fee. It is their responsibility to pay his tuition fee. For me, Chris thinks that if he reject the materials that he never paid or gain with his own hardship. He is not satisfied. The only thing he is satisfied is if he earned it with his own hardship.
Radine Anne Nieva
ReplyDeletechapter 4-7
Transcendentalism means living freely. The decision is on your own. That you are ready to accept the consequences of living freely and being a independent person. Chris decide to live freely by going to Alaska. Leaving behind all the people who are worried to death and the people who he met during his journey. He knows that if he go to Alaska he will die and he also knows that he will face hardships just to survive. And he is not afraid to face death. This is what he made choice of. To live freely, away from the people who order him what to do and become an individual person.
Chapter 6, pages 56-57
ReplyDeleteChris McCandless in a letter to Ron Franz says " So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future." One of the transcendentalist values is The value of non-conformity – questioning authority and traditional ways of thinking.These two connect because in the passage Chris has questioned the traditional way of thinking, which is the belief that security is a good thing, and has come up with his own ideas about it. That the safer and larger accepted lifestyle is crippling to the natural adventurous spirit of mankind. He believes abandoning these traditional views will free the individual to live the way of life that man's spirit desires.
Chris follows the transcendentalism belief of questioning authority. In chapters 4-7 Chris buys a canoe and uses it to travel South into Mexico (illegally) and eventually crosses it again (also illegally). He shows complete disregard for the law, as if it never existed in the first place. I believe this is because Chris does not think that people should be contained and defined by borders that he might say are imaginary. This might be exactly why he ignores them, because borders are an idea, not a physical obstacle that one can overcome with determination, that contains people and prevents them from going into their own wild.
ReplyDeleteChap. 1-3
ReplyDeleteTranscendentalist Thoreau in his writing on Civil Disobedience proclaimed, “Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.” This is where Chris’s motivation to leave society came from. This quote is saying to be who you want to be and nobody else. Thoreau was trying to make a point. He wanted to tell people to industrialize their way of thinking in bigger and broader means to other people. He wanted their voices to be heard. Chris is doing that by meeting these people he’s putting himself out there and his influence of transcendentalism. This quote also talked about how to not confrom to everyone else. Chris does this in these chapters as he makes his adventure into the wild becoming an individual.
Chap. 4-7
ReplyDeleteA main idea of Transcendentalism connecting to Chris McCandless is the idea of being a non-conformist. Chris did not want to be like anyone else and he did not want to do anything like everyone else did. He never wanted to stay in one place and work one job his whole life. When he had a job for a while, he would pick up and leave again. The importance of being an individual and not following society's rules was another major idea that came about in the story. McCandless would not take anything from anyone and would not want anyone to help him because he was a strong individual who wanted to do everything himself so he could be satisfied.