Path To Deterioration
American author, Cassia Leo, once wrote, “The quickest path to self-destruction is to push away the people around you” (Leo). Leo is claiming that loneliness easily causes the destruction of a human. In Jon Krakauer’s novel Into the Wild, he showcases a similar opinion on solitude through the story of Chris McCandless. Chris McCandless runs away from his family and former life to start one of his own, by himself, in the Alaskan wilderness. Similarly, in Ray Bradbury’s novel The Illustrated Man, the idea that solitude plays a huge role in the self destruction of man is shown through a mans magic tattoos that have been haunting him with their stories ever since they were first drawn. In one story, “The Visitor”, Saul Williams, …show more content…
Jon Krakauer in Into the Wild applies the setting of Fairbanks bus 142 to show this idea. After explaining how McCandless could not cross the Teklanika River to get back to civilization, Jon Krakauer states,"He turned around and began walking to the west, back toward the bus, back into the fickle heart of the bush" (Krakauer 171). Since he decided he wanted to go back to civilization, it was a huge loss when Chris found that the river was not crossable. The way Krakauer portrays McCandless’s trip back to the bus emphasizes the pain that he was feeling at the time. This crucial turn in his venture lead to Chris’s death, further proving that isolation was the root of McCandless’s demise. As Jon Krakauer makes his own journey to the bus, he records, “ At 9:00P.M. we round a bend in the trail, and there, at the edge of a small clearing, is the bus. Pink bunches of Fireweed choke the vehicle’s wheel wells, growing higher than the axles ” (176). Krakauer depicts the bus as a confined space that withheld McCandless from the rest of the world. This bus is the heart of Chris’s isolation and harbored his death. Similarly, in The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury uses the setting of outer space to show the same idea. In “The Rocket Man” as Doug’s mother explains her and her husband’s long distance relationship, she tells Doug,“When he went off into space ten years ago, I said to myself, ‘He’s dead,’ Or as good as dead. So think of him dead. And when he comes back, three or four times a year, it’s not him at all, it’s only a pleasant little memory or a dream. And if a memory stops or a dream stops, it can’t hurt half as much. So most of the time I think of him dead. Other times I can’t help myself. I bake pies and treat him as if he were alive, and then it hurts” (Bradbury 110). Doug’s mother expresses her pain of being left alone by her
American author, Cassia Leo, once wrote, “The quickest path to self-destruction is to push away the people around you” (Leo). Leo is claiming that loneliness easily causes the destruction of a human. In Jon Krakauer’s novel Into the Wild, he showcases a similar opinion on solitude through the story of Chris McCandless. Chris McCandless runs away from his family and former life to start one of his own, by himself, in the Alaskan wilderness. Similarly, in Ray Bradbury’s novel The Illustrated Man, the idea that solitude plays a huge role in the self destruction of man is shown through a mans magic tattoos that have been haunting him with their stories ever since they were first drawn. In one story, “The Visitor”, Saul Williams, …show more content…
Jon Krakauer in Into the Wild applies the setting of Fairbanks bus 142 to show this idea. After explaining how McCandless could not cross the Teklanika River to get back to civilization, Jon Krakauer states,"He turned around and began walking to the west, back toward the bus, back into the fickle heart of the bush" (Krakauer 171). Since he decided he wanted to go back to civilization, it was a huge loss when Chris found that the river was not crossable. The way Krakauer portrays McCandless’s trip back to the bus emphasizes the pain that he was feeling at the time. This crucial turn in his venture lead to Chris’s death, further proving that isolation was the root of McCandless’s demise. As Jon Krakauer makes his own journey to the bus, he records, “ At 9:00P.M. we round a bend in the trail, and there, at the edge of a small clearing, is the bus. Pink bunches of Fireweed choke the vehicle’s wheel wells, growing higher than the axles ” (176). Krakauer depicts the bus as a confined space that withheld McCandless from the rest of the world. This bus is the heart of Chris’s isolation and harbored his death. Similarly, in The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury uses the setting of outer space to show the same idea. In “The Rocket Man” as Doug’s mother explains her and her husband’s long distance relationship, she tells Doug,“When he went off into space ten years ago, I said to myself, ‘He’s dead,’ Or as good as dead. So think of him dead. And when he comes back, three or four times a year, it’s not him at all, it’s only a pleasant little memory or a dream. And if a memory stops or a dream stops, it can’t hurt half as much. So most of the time I think of him dead. Other times I can’t help myself. I bake pies and treat him as if he were alive, and then it hurts” (Bradbury 110). Doug’s mother expresses her pain of being left alone by her