A Search for Solitude

Adam Kilwine
Instructor: Wayne Berg
English 121-12
Due: 1/31/07

A Search for Solitude

Although many people throughout the world either live life within the expectations of society or surrender to these expectations at some point in their life; most, if not all people seem to take some kind of “soul-flight” in there lifetime. One person’s soul-flight may be much different from another’s, but it all seems to be an attempt to challenge themselves or break apart from the rest of the world in order to find themselves in the process. Although the story, “Into the Wild,” by Jon Krakauer and “The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain,” are two very different forms of writing by two different authors, they both seem to go into this idea of a soul-flight.
In “The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain,” Wallace Stevens seems to use this mountain in order to represent his life and how he has lived his life his own way instead of surrendering to the expectations of society. In the poem he seems to bring up his uniqueness and seems to feel a completeness in himself that most people in normal society might not understand. In this way he seems to have gone into some kind of solitary in his mind without actually removing himself from the people around him.
Chris McCandless, however, took a little different approach in the story, “Into the Wild.” He actually decided to remove himself completely from society. In doing so he traveled out into the Alaskan wilderness in order to prove to himself that he was strong enough and intelligent enough to survive on his own without any help from other people. He managed to survive for months on his own in this wilderness and by the time he started back home he seems to have had a great cense of pride and self-confidence. Unfortunately he was unable to find a way across the river that he had crossed at the beginning of his journey and wasn’t able to survive long enough to get back home. It’s true that he was probably not very well prepared for such a dangerous journey, but he lasted much longer than most people could and for that reason he deserves more credit than he has actually received.
Even Jon Krakauer, in the search for McCandless and his inspiration for this story seems to have taken a soul-flight. Although he was traveling with someone, it was like he was trying to prove something to himself through his journey and was not about to give up, no matter what obstacles he might encounter on his way.
Wallace Stevens, Chris McCandless, and Jon Krakauer were all very different people who made an effort to somehow separate themselves from society in order to find themselves and prove what they were really made of. Many people will go through life doing nothing but what society tells them to do, but it is things like this that will stick with them forever and many become much better people because of it.