We return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.[1]
[139] "Harold Bloom ambiguously hails the famous 'transparent eyeball' passage as the 'most notorious' in Emerson's work. FN Certainly this passage has drawn more attention than any other in Emerson's oeuvre, earning more frequent and disparate interpretations than any other. Whatever the passage might be, it clearly epitomizes Emerson's compressed, polysemantic style. It crowds together numerous tropes and allusions to the Bible, fully embodying the traits John Burroughs finds in Emerson's best writing: 'It is abrupt, freaky, unexpected... darts this way and that, and connects the far and the near in every line.... [I]t is a leaping thread of light.' FN
The Datsun, of course, belonged to Chris McCandless. After piloting it west out of Atlanta, he’d arrived in Lake Mead National Recreation Area on July 6, riding a giddy Emersonian high. Ignoring posted warnings that off-road driving is strictly forbidden, McCandless steered the Datsun off the pavement where it crossed a broad, sandy wash. He drove two miles down the riverbed to the south shore of the lake. The temperature was 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The empty desert stretched into the distance, shimmering in the heat. Surrounded by chollas, bur sage, and the comical scurrying of collared lizards, McCandless pitched his tent in the puny shade of a tamarisk and basked in his newfound freedom.
Truthful responses to these queries were not likely to be well received by the rangers. McCandless could endeavor to explain that he answered to statutes of a higher order—that as a latter-day adherent of Henry David Thoreau, he took as gospel the essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” and thus considered it his moral responsibility to flout the laws of the state. It was improbable, however, that deputies of the federal government would share his point of view. There would be thickets of red tape to negotiate and fines to pay. His parents would no doubt be contacted. But there was a way to avoid such aggravation: He could simply abandon the Datsun and resume his odyssey on foot. And that’s what he decided to do.
Instead of feeling distraught over this turn of events, moreover, McCandless was exhilarated: He saw the flash flood as an opportunity to shed unnecessary baggage. He concealed the car as best he could beneath a brown tarp, stripped it of its Virginia plates, and hid them. He buried his Winchester deer-hunting rifle and a few other possessions that he might one day want to recover. Then, in a gesture that would have done both Thoreau and Tolstoy proud, he arranged all his paper currency in a pile on the sand—a pathetic little stack of ones and fives and twenties—and put a match to it. One hundred twenty-three dollars in legal tender was promptly reduced to ash and smoke.
(21)
Chastity and moral purity were qualities McCandless mulled over long and often. Indeed, one of the books found in the bus with his remains was a collection of stories that included Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata,” in which the nobleman-turned-ascetic denounces “the demands of the flesh.” Several such passages are starred and highlighted in the dog-eared text, the margins filled with cryptic notes printed in McCandless’s distinctive hand. And in the chapter on “Higher Laws” in Thoreau’s Walden, a copy of which was also discovered in the bus, McCandless circled “Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.” We Americans are titillated by sex, obsessed by it, horrified by it. When an apparently healthy person, especially a healthy young man, elects to forgo the enticements of the flesh, it shocks us, and we leer. Suspicions are aroused. McCandless’s apparent sexual innocence, however, is a corollary of a personality type that our culture purports to admire, at least in the case of its more famous adherents. His ambivalence toward sex echoes that of celebrated others who embraced wilderness with single-minded passion—Thoreau (who was a lifelong virgin) and the naturalist John Muir, most prominently— to say nothing of countless lesser-known pilgrims, seekers, misfits, and adventurers. Like not a few of those seduced by the wild, McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. His yearning, in a sense, was too powerful to be quenched by human contact. McCandless may have been tempted by the succor offered by women, but it paled beside the prospect of rough congress with nature, with the cosmos itself. And thus was he drawn north, to Alaska.
(47)
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANNANDALE
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices."
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN, OR LIFE IN THE WOODS PASSAGE HIGHLIGHTED IN ONE OF THE BOOKS FOUND WITH CHRIS MCCANDLESS’S REMAINS. AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE, THE WORD “TRUTH” HAD BEEN WRITTEN IN LARGE BLOCK LETTERS IN MCCANDLESS’S HAND.
For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.
G. K. CHESTERTON
(82)
"I cannot now tell exactly, it was so long ago, under what circumstances I first ascended, only that I shuddered as I went along (I have an indistinct remembrance of having been out overnight alone),—and then I steadily ascended along a rocky ridge half clad with stinted trees, where wild beasts haunted, till I lost myself quite in the upper air and clouds, seeming to pass an imaginary line which separates a hill, mere earth heaped up, from a mountain, into a superterranean grandeur and sublimity. What distinguishes that summit above the earthly line, is that it is unhandselled, awful, grand. It can never become familiar; you are lost the moment you set foot there. You know the path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud. That rocky, misty summit, secreted in the clouds, was far more thrillingly awful and sublime than the crater of a volcano spouting fire."
- HENRY DAVID THOREAU, JOURNAL (92)
The heaviest item in McCandless’s half-full backpack was his library: nine or ten paperbound books, most of which had been given to him by Jan Burres in Niland. Among these volumes were titles by Thoreau and Tolstoy and Gogol, but McCandless was no literary snob: He simply carried what he thought he might enjoy reading, including mass-market books by Michael Crichton, Robert Pirsig, and Louis L’Amour. Having neglected to pack writing paper, he began a laconic journal on some blank pages in the back of Tanaina Plantlore.
(111)
Shortly after the moose episode McCandless began to read Thoreau’s Walden. In the chapter titled “Higher Laws,” in which Thoreau ruminates on the morality of eating, McCandless highlighted, “when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to.” “THE MOOSE,” McCandless wrote in the margin. And in the same passage he marked, The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.... It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. “YES,” wrote McCandless and, two pages later, “Consciousness of food. Eat and cook with concentration... Holy Food.” On the back pages of the book that served as his journal, he declared: I am reborn. This is my dawn. Real life has just begun. Deliberate Living: Conscious attention to the basics of life, and a constant attention to your immediate environment and its concerns, examples A job, a task, a book; anything requiring efficient concentration (Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to a situation that has value. All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you). The Great Holiness of FOOD, the Vital Heat. Positivism, the Insurpassable Joy of the Life Aesthetic. Absolute Truth and Honesty. Reality. Independence. Finality—Stability—Consistency. As McCandless gradually stopped rebuking himself for the waste of the moose, the contentment that began in mid-May resumed and seemed to continue through early July. Then, in the midst of this idyll, came the first of two pivotal setbacks.
(115)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE STAMPEDE TRAIL
Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man’s garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever,— to be the dwelling of man, we say,—so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can. Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific,—not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on, or to be buried in,— no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there,— the home, this, of Necessity and Fate. There was clearly felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. It was a place of heathenism and superstitious rites,—to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we... What is it to be admitted to a museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star’s surface, some hard matter in its home! I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,—that my body might,—but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, “KTAADN”
(118)
Even staid, prissy Thoreau, who famously declared that it was enough to have “traveled a good deal in Concord,” felt compelled to visit the more fearsome wilds of nineteenth-century Maine and climb Mt. Katahdin. His ascent of the peak’s “savage and awful, though beautiful” ramparts shocked and frightened him, but it also induced a giddy sort of awe. The disquietude he felt on Katahdin’s granite heights inspired some of his most powerful writing and profoundly colored the way he thought thereafter about the earth in its coarse, undomesticated state. Unlike Muir and Thoreau, McCandless went into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature or the world at large but, rather, to explore the inner country of his own soul. He soon discovered, however, what Muir and Thoreau already knew: An extended stay in the wilderness inevitably directs one’s attention outward as much as inward, and it is impossible to live off the land without developing both a subtle understanding of, and a strong emotional bond with, that land and all it holds. The entries in McCandlesss journal contain few abstractions about wilderness or, for that matter, few ruminations of any kind. There is scant mention of the surrounding scenery. Indeed, as Roman’s friend Andrew Liske points out upon reading a photocopy of the journal, “These entries are almost entirely about what he ate. He wrote about hardly anything except food.”
(125)
"I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth.”
How might your life be better with less? Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known to their 4 million readers as "The Minimalists," are the executive producers of MINIMALISM, the #1 indie documentary of 2016. They spoke at TEDxFargo about the benefits of letting go and living a meaningful life with less. For more info about The Minimalists visit http://theminimalists.com
Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known to their four million readers as “The Minimalists,” have written four books, including the bestselling memoir, Everything That Remains. They write about living a meaningful life with less stuff at TheMinimalists.com. Their new film, Minimalism, is currently the #1 documentary of 2016.
Macbeth murders King Duncan for many reasons. One being his desire for power.
Run-on Sentences:These sentences incorrectly connect so many elements that the main idea becomes unclear.
Huck Finn's father is an abusive parent he kidnaps his son, holds him prisoner, and nearly kills him in a drunken fit.
Comma splices: these sentences incorrectly combine two independent clauses joined by only a comma.
In A Clockwork Orange, the elderly and defenseless do not choose to stay in their homes watching television,they are scared into doing so by the violence in the streets.
Modifiers may distract you from determining the subject. Also, do not be confused by intervening prepositional phrases: the object of a preposition cannot be a subject.
(Right) Lady Macbeth's relentless goadings of her husband finally spur Macbeth into action.
(Wrong) Lady Macbeth's relentless goadings of her husband finally spurs Macbeth into action.
When two or more subjects are joined by "or" or "nor," the verb must agree with the subject closest to it.
(Right) Either Maddy or the girls in the "Foxfire" gang are going to get into trouble.
(Wrong) Either the girls in the "Foxfire" gang or Maddy are going to get into trouble.
Make sure that you can point to a single noun or the group of nouns to which each of your pronouns refers.
(Right)A person should be able to defend her principles.
(Wrong)A person should be able to defend their principles.
Remember: The only indefinite pronouns that are commonly (though not necessarily) plural are "some" and "all." The others (each, every, either, neither, etc.) are singular. "None" can be either singular or plural.
Example: Every one of the students knows what to do.
In this example "whom" is the object of the clause and receives the action. It can be helpful to look for prepositions (of, to, from) commonly used with "whom."
(Right) Give the credit to her and me.
(Wrong) Give the credit toshe and I.
In this example "her" and "me" are the objects of the sentence. This is a very easy task whenread without the conjunction "and": "Give the credit to her." It is also a common mistake to use "myself" when "me" is sufficient; you will hear it done during lunchtime announcements almost every day!
(Right)Their car ran well.
(Right)Theirs is a nice home.
In these examples the words "their" and "theirs" indicate possession. There is no need to add an apostrophe to a pronoun.
8. Do not use "this" as a substitute for a noun.
It is not always clear to the reader what "this" refers to when used as a pronoun.
(Right) In Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who, Horton the elephant says that he hears a voice.This claim causes his friends to accuse him of being insane.
(Wrong) Horton the elephant says that he hears a voice. This causes his friends to accuse him of being insane.
