Determinism In Into The Wild

“If someone is foolish enough to think they can take on mother nature, they have their head in the clouds.” Naturalism is a type of surrealism in literature. It shows what nature is really like, and how harsh it can be. It is found in many different writings, including Into the Wild and “To Build a Fire”. Into the Wild tells the journey of a man named Chris who left all he had and was later found dead in the Alaskan Wilderness. A journalist named Jon Krakauer maps out his adventure, and why he does this. “To Build a Fire” is about an unnamed man who gets caught in the middle of the harsh, cold, and unforgiving wilderness. He has to try and survive with only his dog limited supplies he bought earlier. The text “To Build a Fire” and Into the …show more content…
Determinism is that all events that happen are predetermined by causes external to the will of the world. As the narrator describes, “The hid pools of water under the snow that might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick covered them, and in turn was covered by the snow, Sometimes, there were alternate layers of water and ice-skin, so that when one broke through he kept on breaking through for a while, sometimes wetting himself to the waist.” (London). Krakauer also describes a situation connected to determinism. “The unnamed peaks towering over the glacier were bigger and comelier and infinitely more menacing than they would have been were I in the company of another person...I was truly afraid” (Krakauer 138 & 139).These two examples are to These examples show determinism in different ways. The way that the patches of water under the ice were placed and hidden are there by nature's will and might. It wasn’t a man's doing, it was the will of the world. In the segment from Into the Wild is telling how the glacier peaks are so massive that Krakauer couldn’t help but be in awe. The peaks are so high and towering and those are formed by nothing but nature. No external forces are used and only the wind and heat made those peaks. The use of other subjects intertwining with naturalism is also used throughout both …show more content…
The focus on a character and the forces of nature control said character. “To Build a Fire” has both the man, and the dog showing their emotions at many points in the tale. “The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air”(London). The harsh condition of the snow and the lack of heat make the dog want warmth in any way possible. He wants to survive and make it wait it out. This is hard with all the world frozen around you and with a human that is acting different than normal. Likewise, Krakauer describes the effect that the world would have on Chris, or so he thinks. “The suffering is replaced by a sublime euphoria, a sense of calm accompanied by transcendent mental clarity. It would be nice to think McCandless experience a similar rapture.”(Krakauer 198). Krakauer describes how he and Chris were put into nature, but how it helped them to clear their minds. After they had everything thrown at them, they could realize the real meaning of things. Naturalism comes in many different forms. Determinism is seen through both stories, and used to describe the events that nature would have done weather they were there, or not. Realism is used to see the world how it is in reality, and not through a fake thought. transcendentalism can be used to see the effects on a character, and their emotions thereafter. Both passages show these and many other forms of naturalism