Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless, and Henry David Thoreau embrace the 19th century philosophy of transcendentalism. After reading Into the Wild by Krakauer and Thoreau’s excerpts from Walden readers start to see similarities between McCandless and Thoreau though the transcendentalism theme of nature and social reforms. One of the first transcendentalism beliefs the McCandless follows is nature. For example, McCandless does not always take the easy paths. McCandless says “All hope collapse! The canal does not reach the ocean, but merely peters out into a vast swamp’’ (McCandless 35). McCandless wants new ideas, places, people, and experiences in his life. He does not want the same life every day. McCandless wants to get out of his confront zone and in the world. This directly relates to the idea of Thoreau. In Walden, Thoreau says, “I did not wish to take the cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world” (Thoreau). What Thoreau is saying in the quote above is he rather go take a grown up trail nobody has been through in a while than a well know hiking trail, he wants to get out into nature and see what life has in store just like McCandless. In the two quotes quoted above both men in each of the quotes they both wanted the same thing to get out into nature and experience the wildest adventures, not …show more content…
For example, Thoreau and McCandless connect with each other when Thoreau says, “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity” (Thoreau). Thoreau says this because he does not want anything but just the essence of life like McCandless. McCandless wants the same, but puts it in a different way when Gallien says, “His gear seemed exceeding minimal for the harsh conditions of the interior” (Krakauer 5). McCandless did not want anything but what material he had on his back. McCandless was trying to get back to a simpler way of life. McCandless and Thoreau both wanted nothing more than the essentials of