Tuesday, January 17, 2012
“The
trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey
that would change everything. He had spent the previous four years, as he saw
it, preparing to fulfill an absurd and onerous duty: to graduate from college.
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,”
(22).
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--- In summary, McCandless feels like his life is restricted, and he wants it to be different. It says that for four years of his life, he feels it is all in preparation to fulfill an, “…absurd and onerous duty…” (22), or in other words, a path in life that he is not at all interested in. He would rather do what he wants to do. McCandless wants to be free to explore unrestricted, to experience everything that can be made available to him. This supports McCandless’ philosophy of an authentic life most definitely, for it is what he himself feels his life was meant to be lived. In turn, it reflects Thoreau’s philosophy as well, for he was not the type to live freely and happily under restrictions, especially those he did not agree with. Also in similarity, Thoreau too possessed the desire to get out and explore all there was to experience.
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