Into the Wild

Into the Wild

Q1

Chris opposes the culture of the people he used to live with. He disagrees with the interdependence lifestyles of most people in the world. Humans have, since time immemorial, been living as communal organisms. They live together and share various essential factors, both tangible and non-tangible. However, Chris does not approve that kind of life and struggles to achieve perfect self-reliance, something that appears to be a significantly difficult dream. He dreams of a kind o life in which he can live without relating to any other human being (Krakauer). Chris thinks he can only achieve meaningful independence through isolation. The film includes many interviews that show readers the significantly high number of people that tried to help Chris at a time that he prepared to get out of the human community (Krakauer). One can see that the road to achieving total isolation and independence was not as easy because the freedom is only significantly apparent at a time that he heads down the Stampede Trail, a point at which he was about to meet with his death.

Chris ends up living in an abandoned bus. It seems that doing so was easer that creating his own house using natural materials. He is lucky that the hunters had been using the bus and had, therefore, made it the right place for human survival (Krakauer). Chris realizes that the environment on the bus is so conducive, a factor that eliminates the need to create his own life. He appears to forget the fact that the bus is not a natural object. Other humans made it help other humans as well. The conduciveness that encourages him to stay there was also created by hunters who indirectly helped him as well (Krakauer). Chris finally becomes too weak to perform even the simplest life activities and dies. He could not have met with his death at that point if he agreed to let other humans help him in various ways.

It appears that in as much as Chris tries to avoid human cultures, he still ends up interacting with other cultures at least to some extent. The kind f life he chooses to live in the wild is the same as that of the hunters (Krakauer, p. 40). His choice of living in an abandoned bus that acted as a home for the hunters also shows that he still has an interest in some human lifestyles. For those reasons, I can consider Chris as part of a counterculture. However, he only opposes the practices which he knows are human. It appears that his main goal in life is to act contrary to what he sees people doing.

Q2

In our sociology class, Chris would most likely have a conflict perspective. He would, like other people with the same perspective, perceive society as a struggle for limited resources and power (Grund, Brassler, & Fries, p. 153). Even though Chris comes from a relatively wealthy family, Chris appears to have a mentality similar to that of the working class in society. He does not behave as a member of the capitalist class that controls the means of production in society. His lack of interest in following social systems is similar to that of some people who go against cultural norms in a bid to gain access to means of production (Grund, Brassler, & Fries, p. 157). Chris appears to have decided to live in the world due to a lack of power in society. He believes that living an independent life will allow him to exercise some authority over himself and escape the control of other humans. The same happens among the working class who work under the capitalist class. Chris also appears to be hopeless in gaining power among his fellow humans the same to the working class in society who are always disadvantaged by the capitalist group for the latter’s long-term gain.

Chris could not have a functionalist perspective for several reasons. First, functionalists believe that society is made of people who join hands in various ways to make the world a stable place for survival (Knox, p. 118). Chris seems to think that the best way to achieve stability is by isolating himself from people. That means that he does not believe in the existence of balance in a world occupied by many people. Functionalists also believe that people can only achieve stability by working through several elements, which include institutions, traditions, norms, and customs (Knox, p. 120). Chris appears to oppose the stated elements, at least to some extent. He does not support the tradition of mutual relationships between people and thinks of living a kind of life in which he gets everything by himself. Functionalism perceives an individual as an organ, where many organs work together to keep the body alive. Based on that theory, a single organ cannot perform the roles of the whole body. It shows that Chris could hardly achieve stability in isolation.