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A Final Look into the life of Christopher Johnson McCandless

Into the Wild. A Final Look into the life of Christopher Johnson McCandless. Transcendentalism. An individual is the spiritual center of the universe - and in an individual can be found the clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the cosmos itself.

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A Final Look into the life of Christopher Johnson McCandless

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  1. Into the Wild A Final Look into the life of Christopher Johnson McCandless

  2. Transcendentalism • An individual is the spiritual center of the universe - and in an individual can be found the clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the cosmos itself. • The structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self - all knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge. “Know Thyself” - Aristotle

  3. One More Time: The Basic Tenets of Transcendentalism • Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the divine soul (each individual soul is made of the same stuff as the universal World-Soul). • The physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world. • People can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls. • Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition. • Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality.

  4. Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition. • Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality. • To put it simply: According to Emerson, we are capable of evil because we are separated from a direct, intuitive knowledge of God. But if we simply trust ourselves - that is trust in the power each of has to know God directly - then we will realize that each of us is also part of the Divine Soul, the source of all good.

  5. Is Chris a hero? • How would you characterize his journey to Alaska? An escape? A journey? A Quest? • Why should we care about McCandless and his fate? • What is the importance of the father-son relationship in the text? • McCandless takes on an alternative identity on his journey. Why did he do that? • If you were to go on a similar journey, what alternative identity would you choose and where would you go? • How does McCandless treat the world around him (land, people, material possessions, nature)? • How does the evidence reported by Jon Krakauer support the notion that Chris McCandless was a 20th Century transcendentalist? (A full credit response would address all tenets of Transcendental philosophy and cite evidence from the text)

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