Escapism vs. Community (Into the Wild Analysis)
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- Опубліковано 3 кві 2021
- My analysis of Into the Wild (featuring shoutouts to Wendell Berry and Huck Finn), for all the literature lovers out there!
The 2007 adaptation of Krakauer's book -- the true story of ill-fated adventurer Christopher McCandless -- remains one of my favorite films. While I’m still drawn to its transcendentalist aesthetic and its romantic portrayal of travel and ascetic rebellion, I’ve grown to think that this tragic story's deepest value is its reminder of the irreplaceable importance of community. After all, “Happiness [is] only real when shared.”
In this video essay, I draw from what might seem like an unlikely source -- an analysis of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Wendell Berry -- to explore this tension between the desire for adventure/escape and the deeper sense of freedom and meaning that is found in willing community membership.
An adapted form of the script of this video was actually published at Front Porch Republic! www.frontporchrepublic.com/20...
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Introduction
01:51 Escape in Huck Finn
03:06 Escape in Into the Wild
04:01 Huck Finn as America
05:24 Redefining Freedom
07:44 The Necessity of Community
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*Sources
- Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild - / 1845.into_the_wild
- Terrence Malick, A Hidden Life - www.imdb.com/title/tt5827916/
- Wendell Berry, “Writer and Region” in What Are People For? - / 146153.what_are_people...
- Wendell Berry, “The Hidden Wound” - / 227313.the_hidden_wound
- Wendell Berry, “The Dance” in The Wheel - / 470855.the_wheel
*Music (Creative Commons Attribution)
- “Wanderlust” by Scott Buckley ( • 'Wanderlust' [Calm Fol... )
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TAGS - #intothewild, #analysis, #community, #happinessonlyrealwhenshared, American literature, movie review, film commentary, hidden meaning, deep meaning in movies, communal living, consumerism, materialism, adventure, nature, environmentalism, family, Thoreau, Walden, travel movie, - Фільми й анімація
“The other kind of freedom is the freedom to take care of ourselves and of each other, the freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.” Wendell Berry is spitting facts.
Thanks for bringing Wendell Berry and Huck Finn into this conversation. That quote about wanting rights, power and freedom without responsibility cuts to the heart. I find the realities of adulthood to be very hard. Yet I also know that the realities of adulthood, if done well, can change the lives of other people.
So glad it resonated. Thanks for the encouragement!
Your last sentences are inshahalla so powerful
I was blown away by this film. That slab city community looked like such a lovely place to be, I really envisage myself somewhere like that - and yet here I am stuck in London typing this out on my iPhone.
Man, I just want to escape and live a simple life in a village chopping wood or something. I hate this city. Please, help me and tell me if there is any real way to get to this dream of mine.
And the road always leads west
I visited London once in the spring of 1988 , a whole new generation has grown up there that chooses to colonize and never assimilate , it's not England anymore, it's dangerous and sad , where is there any proof or actual evidence that diversity is a good idea ? Stay strong .
Beautiful. This resonates so much with Gabor Mate's the myth of normal: how could a traumatized Chris not need to escape the toxicity of his former life? He sought it in books of great authors who embodied authenticity at any cost (Tolstoy, London, Pasternak), and in the wild that they admired. But the denial of community may the deepest wound, the true reason for his escape.
It is truly sad he did not make it back to live what Tolstoy called family happiness. Yet his story, his words remain as a powerful message to us all, that it resonates with so many shows how much we all need community and communion with nature to heal our wounds.
Amen!! :)
We are so used to urban life yet we romanticize freedom that comes with being a recluse and living a life that is free from the shackles of society. It would take immense courage and spirit to not follow the norms and to unlearn what I have learned. Fewer choices might bring more happiness than the limitless options available to our generation on a platter.
Inside of me there is a something
That wants to say 'we'. But this little thing got threatend and is now marked for ever. No matter what will come... the way is built
one of the best that i have ever watched ,seen,felt
As always, wonderful work man!
Thank you for making this video! I really like your analysis and all the the literature you cited. This movie gave me a lot to think about.
So much love and so much thank you for your work and this video !!!!! ❤❤❤❤
You are doing good work brother. Keep it up.
Thanks for making me understand this better
I really enjoyed your analysis. And if you're in search of purpose you're going to find it in the writings of genius writer (whether in religious texts or in Nobel Prize winning novels). However, if you keep living and reading and living and reading, you're going to doubt that any sense of purpose can be satisfactorily captured by anyone whatsoever. That's where I'm at and I think that Hemingway expresses this sad states of affairs in _The Sun Also Rises_.
In contrast to this longing for freedom from society by getting back to the wild in isolation, is Kerouac's _On The Road_. The characters are certainly longing to free themselves from the restrictions and responsibilities of civilization but they are doing it by remaining tied to a tribe of like-minded adventurers. I was certainly taken in by this when I read it in my twenties. But now when I read it or contemplate it I think, "Yeah, that's nice lifestyle when you're young and healthy."
_The Bridge of San Luis Rey_ by Thorton Wilder concludes much as you do with your analysis--but he adds a sadder twist: We are all doomed to be forgotten and rather quickly (_Hamlet_ expresses this sentiment like no other) so the best thing is to form friendships and relationships and live in that corner of our small little worlds rather than try to embrace it all in its impossible vastness.
So you can try to escape or you can try to embrace a community (aren't we lucky to even have this choice?), but if you really look at yourself and how you stand in the grand scheme of things, you will see that you can't capture the essence of life because it is all way bigger than any of us could ever become. I think this is what reading a variety of great books can teach us. And then we can stop pretending that there is a design a purpose for 'little ol' me.'
Amazing video and amazing analysis man! You made me appreciate the book/movie even more and made me see things in a different way! Great implementation of Huck Finn as well!
Thanks so much for the encouragement!
Amazing analysis..😍
Thanks for the video
Amazing analysis! Thanks:)
Thanks a lot!
Really great. Thank you
Where has this channel been all my life?
😄Welcome! Feel free to pass it along!
On UA-cam. Its a new thing.
Corrupt shallow society vs found family or the family we choose. This is within all of us. People spend their lives earning money and collecting things to fit in or be admired, but really we all have a drive to belong. Even if it feels like we belong outside, it's simply asking to be found and to be seen.
Years after Twain published "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," it seems Twain may have had second thoughts on the ultimate outcome of heading out to the Territory. He wrote in his notebook: "Huck comes back, 60 years old, from nobody knows where-& crazy. Thinks he is a boy, & (seeks) scans always every face for Tom & Becky &c.”
Interesting!
Happiness only real when shared ❤
The same could be said about sexiness.
Do you think that Wordsworth acknowledges more this sense of community and being useful to each other in comparison with the transcendentalists? I make this question because I was reading some poems by Wordsworth, and I had this impression.
Amazing analysis!!
That's a good point! Thanks!! :)
Thanks
Perhaps: jealousy, love, bitterness, understanding, greed, progress, ego, compassion, deceit, openness are characteristics each driving all to greater or lesser degrees. Many achieve lower on those scales than others, few choose to shed ego to the benefit of the community. Mutually beneficial communities are scorned by the dominant and flawed Scientism of people like Dawkins/Plomin. Family should but the programmes of culture, state, and social media pull in different directions. We have to be better not under the self-serving laws of a self-serving state but with how we perceive and understand the motivations of others and how they fit with ours. Singing and dancing, of course, hugging and loving 😻 so long as it's not a device for more fields of corn/fructose and vasoconstriction 😂
"A deadly civilization of piety and violence" - Huck Finn
There seems to be a community of people that like to put Chris down, choosing to insult rather than understand. An example follows...no elaboration...no enlightenment...just insult.
(newest first)
Where did you get adolescents from? . Chris was a biological grown man. Not to mention puberty ends around 15 or 16
escapism is not the issue here. the issue is incompetence. if you want to pursue something make sure you are prepared as much as possible to pursue it. escapism is fine. some people find that they are more content living alone because thats how they are built and know how to live alone. unfortunately he was incompetent. he wanted to do ssomething and wasnt prepared for it. also the idea that a vegan diet killed him is kinda hillarious. as dr. chaffee says "plants are trying to kill you"
Show me something beautiful in the wild and I’ll show you something that will kill you for the slightest in-attention.
McCandless had 300 dollars in his wallet when he passed.
It's to bad, the 7-11 down the street was closed.
He could have been spared by just one slurpee! Ahhhh!
This is my favorite review of the book and movie! Something I’ve never liked though, especially as a trans person, is how everyone insists on calling him Chris instead of Alex. A name you give yourself is just as legitimate, if not more so, than one your parents gave you- especially when the name is deep and meaning to you and you don’t like your parents. This holds true no matter how silly the name might sound to other people. So it bothered me when reading the book and watching reviews that people brush away the fact that he changed his name.
I totally agree with you, but what I understood from the end of the movie is that one of his final messages is signed with "Christopher McCandless" (the message that he left in the bus, saying that he has lived a good life and may God bless all).
Pay attention. Nearhis death he signed a note about calling each thing by its right name with the name Christopher McCandless.
"Trans" 😂😂😂
“Huck Finn speaks of and for and as his place, the gathering place of the continent’s inland waters. His is a voice governed always by the need to flow, to move outward. It is arguable, I think, that our country’s culture is still suspended as if at the end of Huckleberry Finn assuming that its only choices are either a deadly “civilization” of piety and violence or an escape into some ‘territory’ where we may remain free of adulthood and community obligation. We want to be free; we want to have rights; we want to have power; we do not yet want much to do with responsibility.” ---Wendell Berry from the essay “Writer and Region”
Often these stories into the wild nd other look like essays from depressed man.
To me was a depressed, leaving behind many things and man trying to scape from home traumas and constantly avoiding when he is been asked about his family or going back, refusing to forgive his parents mistakes and moving on in life. 😢
Chris McCandless was a fool. Romantic notions of him as some kind of hero is like trying to convince people that a pile of dog shit is a bowl of chocolate pudding. Whoever discovered his body in that bus found a horrific pile of rotting flesh, not some young heroic who gently passed into the arms of Nature.
I don't agree with you.
This is a false false dichotomy, there are lessons to be learned from both choices.
In one place of the movie, it says that happiness is in helping others, but this fool could not even help his parents, and in the end, with the dream of reaching the truth of life, he died like a stray dog . I just regret why I wasted my time watching this crap movie
People will ne forced to go Mcandless once the grid goes down.
Stay away from the wild potatoe seeds folks.
you're are shallow to even bring up this as a dichotomy. Read more books, American.
What??
@@-k7228Excellent question...no response
@@richardstever3242Well I guess he was trying to say that escapism can be done in community which I would agree on.
@@henrionlyfemmes8430 i think he is saying that he is smart, but I don't see any evidence.