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Seth Isch

Emre Royuncu

ENGL 106

12 December 2011

Outside the Steel Walls of Society

What would life be like without all the noise from the city, distraction of money and

fame, or societal influences constantly weighing down on your shoulders? That is exactly what

Timothy Treadwell and Chris Mccandless wanted to discover. They were tired of society

constantly dictating what they could do and say. They needed to escape from the world and all of

its rejection. Timothy needed out to escape the rejection of society and in the process fell in love

with the brown grizzly bears of Alaska. It was from then on his sole mission to live with the

bears and be like a bear. Also he wanted to gain awareness for the bears and to help keep them

safe. However, little did he know that he may have brought more harm to the bears then he did

good. Throughout his journey Timothy found what truly made him happy and accomplished

what he set out to do.

Chris, in contrast to Timothy, really just needed to leave his power-hungry society, which

influenced parents, and find what truly made him happy. He found happiness in working hard

and living with the very minimum he needed to survive. Chris did not need a fancy car to feel

happy. He was not trying to impress anyone and that it why his parents angered him so greatly.

Chris made friends with everyone he met and was his own man. However when he realized that

he was not happy being alone it was too late. He too accomplished what he set out to do, he felt

true joy and happiness. Timothy and Christopher were two very different types of people who

had very similar hang-ups with the world.

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“Into the Wild” and “Grizzly Man” are both documentaries about men who leave society,

but the movies themselves are not quite as similar. Timothy himself mainly filmed “Grizzly

Man”. That was part of what he did there; he took a camera and filmed everything he witnessed

and brought it back to inform the world. You could say that “Grizzly Man” is a documentary

within a documentary. Then there is “Into the Wild” which is a motion picture with Chris and his

family being played by actors. Christ did not have nearly as much to go on. They had to create

the movie based on his journals and the people he met. There are many similarities to their

journeys into the wilderness, but at the same time there are even more differences. The

documentaries “Grizzly Man” and “Into the Wild” tell of a man leaving what in their mind is a

corrupt and hindering society, and freeing themselves into the wilderness. Although they end

their journeys in the same dismal way what got them there was far from parallel. Their

differences span from why they left, what did their experience in the wild consist of, and how did

their journeys affect the world and the people and around them.

There were many reasons to why Timothy Treadwell decided to leave society and go into

the wild with the brown bears of Alaska. Mainly he was tired of rejection. Timothy started

college at Emory on a diving scholarship until he hurt his back; he was devastated. This then lead

into to his heavy addiction to drugs. After he got over that hurdle he decided to start a career in

acting and moved to Los Angeles, California. He was not doing too well by barley making

enough money to live off doing some dead-end jobs. Timothy had some auditions here and there

but nothing really promising until “Cheers”. He was supposed to get a part in this famous T.V.

show, but in the end he was their second choice. This killed him and he needed a something to

make him feel good again.

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Timothy hated how society had so much control over us as a whole and how the

government had a say in everything that we did. He needed to leave the corrupted society and try

to go beyond the limits of the government to do something he really had a passion for. Timothy

and his mother always loved animals and nature. Even from when he was a little kid he always

had a great passion for animals that many others did not contain. Timothy always had a very

strong connection with the bears and even when he died he still had a stuffed bear from when he

was a child. This led him to the brown bears of Alaska. Timothy received funding from the

government that he hated so much to go and explore the land and see what it was like there for

the grizzly bears. When he came back he would go around to schools all over the country and

give presentations about his travels to Alaska free of charge. It was his goal to give awareness to

the world about what was going on in Alaska and how to help save these animals. Timothy

wanted to stop the hunting of bears and keep them as safe as possible. This is what became his

calling and what he was going to live for. Timothy was first drawn to the wild because he needed

to get away from society and the all the rejection in the world. What kept him there were the

bears and their protection, but was he really protecting them? Timothy brought extra attention to

the bears only making more and more people want to come and see the bears. Christopher’s

journey however was not quite the same as Timothy’s.

Someone on the outside looking in on the McCandless family would see nothing wrong;

they were living the “American Dream”. Why on earth would Chris want to leave? Although his

family had great wealth, they were extremely distant and rarely ever showed love for one

another. His father never approved of anything and nothing was ever good enough. His father

also was abusive to his wife and family and Chris was tired of dealing with it. The only person

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that he connected with in his family was his sister, Corrine and they were exceptionally close.

They were all they had and their only means of survival.

Chris worked hard, got a college degree from Emory, and qualified to go to Harvard Law

School. He worked very hard to get to this point and he liked that feeling of accomplishment. He

was tired of having everything handed to him. Chris’s parents were always trying to “keep up

with the Joneses” and it drove him crazy. All they prided themselves in was what they had and

how they had more than everyone else. They just bought their happiness instead of finding true

happiness with each other as a family. Chris did not like what society was doing to his family

and the rest of the world, and he needed an escape. Which for him was running away into the

wild. The major tipping point for him was when his parents offered him a brand new car for

graduation when he already had a perfectly good one. Chris was just fed up with parents always

giving him everything and trying to buy his love instead of actually loving him for who he was.

He left all his earthly items behind including his car and all of his money, which he left to

charity. Chris told no one where he was and none of his family members would know until they

found him dead two years later in the forests of Alaska. Chris’s journey into the wild was one of

soul searching. Like Schickel put it, “His is a sort of belated hippie odyssey and most of his

adventures are fairly typical of that no-longer novel experience” (Schickel 1), his journey was

quite “hippy” like in the sense of him living free and without the use of earthly items. Unlike

Timothy, Chris’s family did not know where he was, which made it much harder for his family.

Although Chris’s journey was not as dangerous, it was much harder on his family than that of

Timothy’s family always knowing where he was located.

Life in the wild, although similar, was quite different from Timothy to Chris. Timothy

Treadwell went into the wild all by himself with nothing, but a little food and a tent. Summer

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after summer, his only company being the bears. Timothy loved the bears and that was the sole

purpose of his journey up to Alaska. He wanted to raise awareness and protect what he truly

loved above all things. Timothy had an unhealthy relationship with the bears. He said on more

than one occasion that he wanted to be like the bears, to even be an actual bear. He was like a

child with the bears trying to play with them and giving them names like you would with

humans. Timothy did the same with every animal he met. “Now let the expedition continue. Now

it’s off with Timmy the Fox. We’ve got to find Banjo—he’s missing”(Brinks 2). He also talked

to them and about them like they were children. “Oh he’s a big bear. He’s a very big bear. A

very big bear. . . . He’s a big bear” (3). Timothy was a complete child when it came to his

feelings and emotions. When he got angry with people or the government he would throw a fit,

screaming and yelling at the camera. Although he was very child like in many aspects he too had

to be tough and manly to survive in the wilderness.

Timothy’s journey was more barbaric and lonely as a whole in comparison to Chris. He

had to constantly fend off bears to stay alive and his journeys where always done “solo”. The

only person, other than his pilot that brought him there and brought food throughout his journey

was Amie Huguenard who ended up dying by his side. She was however never captured on film

and was said to have been afraid of bears. Although he thought that he was a bear and that he

was standing his ground I feel what he was doing was a little insane. The bears did not think he

was one of them and they backed off in fear. They just did not see him as a threat or he was just

plain lucky. That is not how bears should be treated; they deserve their respected distance. This

is what enraged many of the native Alaskans. By him becoming so friendly he was breaking

what they had lived by for many years and making them more susceptible to a poacher attack,

because the bears would grow to think that all humans were friendly. Chris’s journey on the

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other hand was not quite as dangerous but had its fair amount of risks.

Like Timothy, Chris did enter into the wild all alone and left his family and friends

behind. The biggest difference is, unlike Timothy, Chris meets people and interacted with them

along the way, which only further benefited him in finding himself. Chris found his happiness in

having nothing and just trucking it across country meeting new people along the way. The many

people he met turned into great friendships that helped him to find himself and turned him into a

man. His journey started out west, where he found a nice “hippy” couple that gave him food and

a place to stay until he was ready to move on. They gave him some great insight and he did the

same to them. Although he soon left them that was not the last he saw of them. Each time he

came back to them he had changed even more. Throughout his journey he had many odd jobs

from working on a farm to working at the every famous McDonalds. All the money he earned

went right towards him reaching his ultimate goal of Alaska. However out of all of his

experiences and people he met Ron was by far the nearest and dearest to him.

When Ron first met Chris he thought he was crazy living in a tent in the dessert next to a

nudist beach. He asked him “Why do you not want to get a college degree?” Chris told him he

had one, but he does not want a career. Ron took him under his wing and let him live in his

house and eat his food. When it was time for Chris to finally leave Ron drove him north towards

Alaska, and before he got out of the car Ron asked Chris if he would be okay if he adopted him.

Chris was taken a back and did not know what to say. He asked if they could talk about this

when he got back from Alaska, and Ron agreed. Neither one of them knew that this was going to

be their last encounter. When Chris finally made it to Alaska and spent time to find himself and

it was too late. The river had frozen over and he had no way back. Was everything he and

Timothy went through worth it?

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Timothy and Chris’s journeys no matter what you thought about them did affect someone

for the better. Timothy’s journey was very dangerous and had his family and friends constantly

worried with him in Alaska fending off bears. However unlike Chris, his family always knew

where he was and had a basic idea of what he is doing. He did not just get up and leave and

never come back. Timothy did spread awareness of the bears to the entire country and even the

world. Although his practices were very odd and by him being there with the bears brought them

unneeded harm, he was doing what he thought was right. Timothy may have made a bigger

difference worldwide than Chris, at least while he was still alive. That is the difference though.

Timothy’s goal besides escaping a corrupt society was to make a difference in the world for

something that he truly cared about and loved, the grizzly bear. Also I feel that by Timothy

acting the crazy way he did, he received greater notice. Yes, he may have lost of his personal

creditability, but he got much more attention which got the bears much needed awareness. That

was the beauty of Timothy; he did not care what people thought of him.

In the end Timothy died how he always intended to, by the bears. Which was not a shock

to any of his family and friends. Although no one wanted it to happen, everyone, including

Timothy, knew it was inevitable. He thought this would show what the bears were capable of and

how much he cared for them. Timothy always wanted to be a bear to the point he thought he was

a bear. The only problem he did not think of is that by him being killed by a bear, he caused a

bear that was only acting on natural instinct to be murdered by a human, exactly what he was

trying to stop. In the end I am not sure that what he went through was all worth it. He did bring

awareness to the bears, but he also brought much harm by him being there and acting the way he

did.

Chris also went on a dangerous journey, but unlike Timothy’s family, Chris’s family had

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no idea where he was or what had happened to him. They never knew until he was dead. Chris

went into the wild solo to get away from his family and to find himself. He was not trying to

save the world and that is why he did not affect the world as a whole until after he died and

everyone heard his story. Chris just needed out and that is why I think that he just left his family.

He really hurt his parents and that is what I think he wanted to do. Also his sister was just a

necessary sacrifice. By him leaving he helped to bring a change to many people, including his

family.

Although Chris did not change the world, he changed everyone he met and that is what I

feel is journey was really meant for. I feel he helped to accomplish more for other people than

himself. Yes he found himself, but forever changed those people he came in contact with. He

gave Ron a much-needed boost in his life and really helped the hippy couple to come to terms

with her son running away. Also by him running away he helped his family come together. It is

like the saying, “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone”. They did not know what they were

doing was going to rip their son from them and feel every lasting regret for their behaviors and

actions. In the end, by Chris running off into the wild he did not only help himself he help all

those he met, especially his family which was the ultimate goal.

These two documentaries “Grizzly Man” and “Into the Wild” both tell of a similar story:

That of a Man fed up with society and the world and needed away out and to find themselves.

Timothy needed to get out from all of his rejection that he had in his life and express his child

within out in the Alaskan wild with the great brown bears that he loved so much. While Chris

was fed up with always having everything handed to him and his family appreciating material

things above their children. Timothy found happiness with just living with the bears while Chris

found happiness living with hardly anything and working extremely hard to get what he had

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always wanted. They had similar aspects but many differences. These movies where both

documentaries done in entirely different ways. “Grizzly Man” being first hand footage and “Into

the Wild” being a reenactment of a true event. These documentaries “Grizzly Man” and “Into the

Wild” tell of two men leaving a mind crippling society for them and entering into the wild. Their

journeys had similarities and differences that made each person unique. Their differences

consisted of an array of things from what triggered their entrance into the wild, what was their

experience like there, and the outcomes of their journeys.