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Universitatea Babe- Bolyai, Cluj Napoca

Facultatea de Litere
Specializarea Englez- Francez




The Wanderlust of the American Hero







Coordonator tiinific:
Lect. Univ. Dr. Rare Moldovan
Absolvent:
Daroczi Diana Florina




Cluj Napoca
2012

2

Table of Contents

Introduction..3
Whats in a name?.6
1. Under the Influence of Henry David Thoreau..8
1.2. The Wild Land.16
2. Sean Penns Into the wild a film that influenced a generation20
2.1. Nature and Symbols in a Journey into the Wild ..25
2. 2. The Real Light of Into the Wild..31
3. A Portrait of the Wandering Hero...33
3.1. Screenshots of Wandering Heroes ..46
4. Conclusion...49
Works cited..52
Annex...55


















3


Introduction

The present thesis will start from Jon Krakauers non fictional book Into the Wild,
published in 1996. The first part of my thesis will deal with three important aspects: the
influence of Henry David Thoreau over Christopher McCandless journey, the second aspect
will be the change of names, and the last one would be, the most significant one for me, the
importance of the land in his journey.
When I first saw the trailer of the film Into the Wild, in the fall of 2007, I did not pay
attention to the fact that the film was based on a real life story. I was fascinated by the images
and the landscapes that were presented. The main character seemed to me, a rebel adolescent
who wanted to do whatever he wants with his life. I was very curious to see where the hero is
going and what would happen to him. At the age of seventeen, it seemed, excuse the non
scholastic term, a cool story. I have previously seen films in which the main character
starts a journey either on the sea, wanders somewhere, gets lost, shipwrecked or castaway,
but in the end, the hero would always turn back from where he started the journey, or achieve
his goal. The end of Sean Penns Into the Wild shocked me; it was only after I saw the film
that I have learnt about the book.
The book Into the Wild is based on the real story of Christopher Johnson McCandless,
a 22 year old, who left his family and the environment in which he was brought up, and
started a journey of self discovery in the American wilderness, alienating himself from
society and refusing any of its conventions. The fundament of the book is constituted by Jon
Krakauers article on Chris story, written for Outside Magazine in January 1993.
Undoubtedly, it is impossible to understand what was going in young McCandlesss
head. It is hard to explain, but while hearing and reading about Chris choice to go into the
wild, one cannot neglect his curiosity, love of nature and exploration, and of always pushing
the boundaries, and lastly, the importance of literature in the young mans life. Chris was an
avid reader; he took a few books in his back pack when starting the journey, and while in the
wild, began reading Henry David Thoreaus Walden, ripped off pages from the books that he
carried with himself to make daily notes, and inserted quotes from Leo Tolstoy, Jack
London, or Henry David Thoreau in his journal. Jan Burres, a forty-one-year-old rubber
tramp who stopped with her boyfriend, Bob, to consult their map when they noticed the
4
young man on the side of the road, Chris, and picked him up; she told the author the
following Alex was big on the classics: Dickens, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, Jack
London
1
.Wayne Westerberg, the owner of the grain elevator from Carthage, remembered
that He read a lot. Used a lot of big words
2

After reading Thoreaus Walden, we can state that the influence of the above
mentioned author is very much present in Chris life, or at least, the two had very similar
journeys, except for McCandless tragic death. They were both well educated young men. On
one hand, Thoreau attended Concord and Harvard University; Chris graduated from Emory
University with straight As. On the other hand, they both shut themselves away from the
society. The young man believed that How I feed myself is none of the governments
business. Fuck their stupid rules
3
. They both contemplated nature, valued the importance of
literature and literary classics, and they both kept a written account of their adventures in the
great open, in nature, from the various parts of the United States that they had visited.
In the second part of the thesis I will focus on the film adaptation of the book on film
and important symbols which can be found in the background of the journey.
The third part of the thesis will make a comparative analysis of other five films: Days
of Heaven (1978), Wild America (1997), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward
Henry Ford (2007), Wendy and Lucy (2008), films which share with Into the Wild (2007) the
theme of journey.
At the time when the article was published, Chris story stirred up various reactions
from the readers. Some condemned his decision to leave his family without any previous
announcement; others condemned his stubbornness and lack of adequate equipment for the
Alaskan climate, even if he knew he was going to stay for more than just a few days out
there, showing that he was ill prepared. Then, there were those who pitied him or emphasized
and admired the young man for his courage to do something and make a change in his life,
lastly, there were those who followed his example.
Consequently, Into the Wild can be regarded as a roman daction, a novel of action,
an adventure novel. What one does justifies his or her life, which applies to Christopher
McCandless act. One cannot help thinking about the great American adventure novels, such
as Mark Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or, why not, J.D. Salingers The Catcher
in the Rye, and last but not least, Jack Kerouacs On the Road. Richard W.B. Lewis wrote in
the article Recent Fiction: Picaro and Pilgrim that the above mentioned novels show an

1
Krakauer, Jon, Into the Wild , Anchor Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., New York, 1997, p. 43.
2
Idem., p. 18.
3
Jon Krakauer, p.6.
5
openness to experience, a deliberate vulnerability to life, along with a sense of restlessness
and a sharp but oddly unspecified urgency
4
. The book is a non-fictional one, but one could
easily set Christopher McCandlesss name alongside Huckleberry Finns, Holden
Caulfields, Salvatore Sal Paradises and Dean Moriartys, when talking about their
carefree attitude and taste for adventure. Through his actions, Chris proved openness to
experience and deliberate vulnerability to life.
Elsewhere in the article, Richard W.B. Lewis states that stubbornness is required for
individuality these days
5
when opposing Holden Caulfield to Huck. He calls Holden a late
Huck, living in an urban area, with enough money to support his curiosity and its
consequences, and his adventures, but, still, like Huck an adolescent on the run
6
, an
adolescent on the run from the social conventions. Chris was himself on the run from the
social conventions, but not from social responsibilities, even if he was regarded as socially
irresponsible. He was on the run to find himself, and was on the road to the ultimate Alaskan
adventure. Embracing life on the road, he embarked on a journey which was waiting for
those who carry a vulnerable openness to experience, such as Huckleberry Finn, Holden
Caulfield, Sal Paradise, and Dean Moriarty.
Richard W.B. Lewis said in his article stubbornness is required for individuality
these days. Chris is no exception from this, he proved to be stubborn when he refused to let
his family know about his plans, and, while on the road, about his whereabouts.
Moreover, we can easily state that that Chris adventure can be regarded as
picaresque, and he, as a picaro, even if the book is a non-fictional work. The picaresque
novel is relating the random adventures of certain energetic young men on their travels.
According to Camelia Crciun, amongst other definitions for the picaresque novel, the
former is described by the following:After an age of chivalrous, pastoral literature
glorifying courage, idealism and human strength, the picaresque novel is a parody, a reaction
and also a rejection to this weak literature.
7
The definition does not suit this book entirely,
since it is based upon collected journal entries and notes, testimonies of the people he met on
the road, of his friends and relatives, ending with the young mans tragic death. So there is no
comic vein in the book, which is rather the result of a well documented journalists work
interwoven with the skills of a writer capable of fine distinctions and profound insight,

4
Richard W.B. Lewis, Recent Fiction: Picaro and Pilgrim, in The voice of America, Forum Lectures, Modern
American Literature, United States Information Agency, Washington D.C., 1973, p. 117.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
Camelia Crciun, The Picaresque Novel A Short Survey on the 18
th
Century English Novel, Editura Universiii
Transilvania, Braov,p. 13.
6
demonstrated in the chapters in which the author presents his personal perspective and how
he relates himself to the story. Yet, the sixth description of the picaresque novel given by
Camelia Crciun describes very well the content of Into the Wild

The novel is extremely dynamic in reflecting reality. The whole novel is based on
movements: the hero, the society, the whole worlds is moving. The general movement creates
the impression of instability, anxiety as well as vitality. The revolt, the discontentment, are
general attitudes because protest is implicitly present in the story or explicitly present in
comments and reflections.
8


Jon Krakauers book is indeed very dynamic, it is based on the movements of the
hero, Alexander Supertramp, and we can sense the protagonists revolt and discontentment,
his attitude towards the society of which conventions he refuses to obey; On one hand, his
protest is implicitly present in the story through the journey he takes, on the other,
explicitly present particularly in the film - in his numerous comments and reflections on
truth, nature and self discovery. As Marc V. Donadieu put it in his dissertation thesis A
novel may have picaresque aspects, but simply having one or two of the above qualities, such
as autobiography and travel, does not qualify it as a picaresque novel.
9
This thesis does not
aim to prove that Into the Wild is or not a picaresque novel, but the characteristics of this type
of novel seemed relevant for the description of the book. Nevertheless, the book successfully
presents and explores the travels of an energetic young man. Mahatma Gandhi famously put
it A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.

Whats in a name?
Before getting any further, it is useful to settle the problem of the names in this book.
The young mans complete name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He grew up in an
affluent suburb of Washington D.C., and, in the summer of 1990, after successfully
graduating from Emory University, Chris decided to embark on the journey that would
change not only his and his familys life, but that of the people he met on the road. He

8
Idem. p. 14.
9
Marc V. Donadieu, American Picaresque: The Early Novels of T. Coraghessan Boyle (A Dissertation Presented to
the Graduate Faculty of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree), 2000, p. 5.

7
invented a new life for himself
10
and a new name, that of Alexander Supertramp. The
Oxford Dictionary gives the following definition for the word tramp: a person who travels
from place to place on foot in search of work or as a vagrant or beggar. Chris definitely
moved from one place to another ever since he was a young boy. I can only guess from
where the name of Alexander came out; I can think of Alexander the Great, since he was the
Greek king of Macedon, the ruler of the largest empires in the ancient world.
Metaphorically, Chris might have adopted this name because he was about to discover the
American territory, just as the great emperor conquered and explored the vast land stretching
from the Ionian Sea to the Himalayas. Yet, this is still a mystery, the only true fact remains
that he did performed this change of names. In the film, we first see this while Chris writes
Alexander Supertramp July 1990, with a red lipstick found in the bathroom bin, on the
mirror of the bathroom, of what seemed to be a gas station. Later on, in an emblematic scene
while he is biting a tasteful apple and calling it Super Apple and himself Supertramp. The
book stipulates that in September, the same year, when Wayne Westerberg picks him up, the
hitchhiker introduced himself as Alex McCandless. Whereas, in 1992, April 28, he politely
introduced himself as Alex to Jim Gallien, the last one to see Chris alive, Jim was the one
who pulled over his vehicle for the young man. Gallien tried to obtain a last name from him
but Alex was all he got.









10
Jon Krakauer,, Into the Wild , Anchor Books, New York, 1997, p. i.
8

1. Under the Influence of Henry David Thoreau

Not only did Chris enjoy reading, but writing had an important role in his journey.
Firstly, I would call it cathartic. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the goal of tragic drama
and is produced by the strong emotion of pity and terror. Catharsis is an emotional and
spiritual cleaning; it is the process of releasing, and by providing relief from, strong or
repressed emotions. Chris had no one to share his experiences with, so he noted down
everything he saw, everything he went through, his adventures, and most important, what he
felt, even if that was rend by quotations from his favorite authors, or put in third person.
When he had nobody to show something, he took photographs. His journal was his only
companion. I would go as far as saying that this journey and his decision to go into the wild
were themselves cathartic. The catharsis is also achieved by the reader of the book Into the
Wild, since Jon Krakauer, through his style, manages to present the tragic drama of Chris and
his family, stirring pity.
The first and most important theme that Chris journey, Jon Krakauers book, Sean
Penns film, Henry David Thoreaus Walden, share and explore is nature.
From an early age, Walt McCandless took his son and his family to mountain trips; it
was back then, that the boy first started mountaineering, thus nature played an important role
in his life from an early age.
After starting the journey, he couldnt stop talking about natures beauty to those he
met on his way to Alaska. While reading Thoreaus Walden, Chris noted in his journal, or
underlined passages from the book which inspired him the most, in which he believed, and
lines that described the way he felt about nature.
If we take a look at Henry David Thoreaus life and work, and start to compare it to
McCandless life and the attention he dedicated to this journey, the way he lived, believed
and acted, we can state that he shares many things with the Transcendentalist writer.
Furthermore, we observe, that naming Christopher McCandless as one of Thoreaus
disciples, particularly while bearing the name Alexander Supertramp, is not an overreaction,
and, it seems to me, nor far away from being the truth. Even if Christopher Lehman-Haupt, in
his review of the book for the New York Times, calls the Transcendental affirmations that
were leading Chris, clichd

9
the need to ''revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of
experience,'' and clichd affirmations that writers like Tolstoy, Thoreau and Jack London
were leading him on.

This chapter is dedicated to the presence and influence of Henry David Thoreau over
Chris McCandless / Alexander Supertramps life.
The Oxford Dictionarys definition for disciple, apart from the the personal
follower of Christ, is that of a follower or pupil of a teacher, leader, philosopher. The word
describes Chris attitude and actions through his journey very well; he was a follower of the
Transcendentalist philosopher. To Jon Krakauer, Chris was a latter-day adherent of Henry
David Thoreau; he took as gospel the essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience consequently
he took a moral responsibility in disregarding the laws of the state. One such example is
given when the flash flood drenched young McCandless Datsun. The engine got so wet that
when he tried to start the car, it wouldnt catch; he tried so hard to restart it that the battery
drained. The car wouldnt start, forcing Chris to abandon his dear old Datsun, about which
hed previously said that it runs great.
11
He had no other choice but to walk, because if he
would have gone to the authorities, they would have had boring questions for him, such as:
why did he ignore the regulations related to the flash flood? Was he aware that the cars
registration and his license were expired and that the vehicle wasnt insured? Lacking his car
insurance and having his license and registrations expired, it either means that he was
irresponsible, or that he refused to obey the civil laws, just as Henry David Thoreau refused
to pay his taxes.
David Henry Thoreau was born on Virginia Road, in Concord, Massachusetts, on
July, 12, 1817, as the third child of John and Cynthia Thoreau. He was named after an uncle,
but, during the mid-1830s he started to indentify himself by the name that we know today,
Henry David Thoreau. I am interrupting the philosophers biography to draw attention to a
minor similarity, perhaps irrelevant, but still present.
As we know by now, Christopher McCandless decided to change his name into
Alexander Supertramp. This change, and very clever move, helped him easily disappear from
the social life, so that nobody, including here his parents, would be able to follow him. After
burning down his identification card, his credit card, the money that he carried anything
that might connect him to the past and his social life he introduced himself as Alex (or
Just Alex). He did so when he met Jan Burres and Bob, when he met and wrote postcards

11
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Into-the-Wild.html, last consulted on March 1
st
, 2012, at 15.36 PM.
10
to Wayne Westerberg, the farmer from Carthage who hired Alex to work with him at the
grain elevator, or, in his journal, written in third person: At last! Alex finds what he
believes to be the Wellteco Canal and heads south [] Alex finds Mexicans to be warm,
friendly people. Much more hospitable than Americans
12
But, in chapter ten, Fairbanks,
we learn that Westerberg gave the authorities Chris S.S. number from the second W-4 form
which he filled when signing to work for him, at the farm. The last handwritten note on a
ripped page from a novel by Nikolai Gogol was signed with his real name

S.O.SINEEDYOURHELP.IAMINJURED,NEARDEATH,ANDTOOWEAKTO
HIKEOUTOFHEREIAMALLALONE,THISISNOJOKE.INTHENAMEOFGOD,
PLEASEREMAINTOSAVEME.IAMOUTCOLLECTINGBERRIESCLOSEBYAND
SHALLRETURNTHISEVENING.THANKYOU,CHRISMCCANDLESS.AUGUST?
13

Chris decision to change his name reminds me of Marcel Prousts la recherche du
temps perdu, a book which not only deals with la recherche (the quest, the pursuit) which
seems to be what Chris had done during his journey he was looking for adventure, and for
his own self. This change of names applies one of the five basic oppositions of French
philosopher, Henri Bergson, which we find in psychological life, namely, the opposition
between the shallow self (that is, the social self) and the deep, profound self
14
. These two are
Marcel Prousts center of attention. This is very closely related to the change of names that
Chris performed. It seems that the name Christopher Johnson McCandless stood for the
young mans social self and Alexander Supertramp represents his profound self; it stands for
who he wanted to be in his social life, but couldnt, thus, he took this representative journey .
In A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau, William E. Cain assumes that
Thoreau switched his first and middle names to affirm a measure of independence from his
family and to signify the new person he had become through his Harvard education and
friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists
15
. Another similarity
between the philosopher and the protagonist of Jon Krakauers book appears at this point:
Chris changed his name after graduating from Emory and by doing so he could have gained
independence from his parents with whom he had a troublesome relationship. As one of
Chris male friends, Hathaway, puts it

12
Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, p. 35.
13
Idem, p. 12.
14
moi superficial( ou social)/ moi profound from Yvonne Goga, Tendences du roman franais au XXe sicle ,
Euro Tami Press, Cluj-Napoca, 1998, p. 19.
15
William E. Cain, A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 11.
11

My impression was that his parents were very nice people [] no different, really, than
my parents or anyones parents. Chris just didnt like being told what to do. I think he would
have been unhappy with any parents; he had trouble with the whole idea of parents.
16


In 1821, the Thoreau family moved to Boston, and the following year, at the age of 6,
David Henry first discovers the beauties of nature, and his love of nature, during a visit to
Walden Pond. Just as Chris, he too was a curious spirit and dedicated most of his time to
learning activities. While young McCandless put in practice many of the things he read about
in Walden, Henry David Thoreau had an enthusiastic response to Emersons book Nature
(1836)
17
which later he also put in practice. According to William E. Cain, in chapter one
from Nature there is a line that prophecies the shape of Thoreaus life and work. The
passage reads the following In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man in
spite of real sorrows.
On the one hand, we know that Chris backpack was half-full with books; he carried
about nine paperback books which had been given to him by Jan Burres in Niland. Among
those books the names of Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gogol could be found, but he also read mass-
market books by Michael Crichton, Robert Pirsing, and Louis LAmour. He carried these
volumes because he knew he would have a lot of time for reading during the time he would
spend on the road and in the wild. The film presents a scene in which Chris was reading to
his sister from Sharon Olds poetry.
On the other hand, Thoreau was a relentless reader himself; he enjoyed reading the
Classics Plato, Homer- but also books about exploration and travel; natural history studies
and guidebooks. Thoreau was only marginally attentive to the poets, novelists, and short
story writers of his own time. He was acquainted with the writings of James Fenimore
Cooper, Washington Irving, Longfellow, and Herman Melville
18
.
During his lifetime, Thoreau had made many trips in nature, and sometimes to the
city, which he disliked. According to an illustrated chronology, found in William E. Cains
Guide in July, 1855, David takes his third trip to Cape Cod, in September he travels to
Vermont and New Hampshire, in October/November to New Jersey and New York; and to
Brooklyn in 1858. In May, he travels to New York City and in July he explores the White
Mountains in New Hampshire. During the days he spent at Walden, he explored Mount

16
Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, p.115.
17
William E. Cain, p. 14.
18
William E. Cain, p.19.
12
Ktaadn on a trip to Maine in August/September, 1846. Besides being a writer and a
philosopher, he was a passionate explorer. It was only while exploring that he had the chance
to contemplate the subject of his philosophy nature and to be away from society and its
unfair rules. Paradoxically, the cities were meaningless, empty spaces to him. While living at
William Emersons household, Thoreau was unhappy; in his journal entry, he complained
about the bustle and anonymity of the city; Who can see these cities and say that there is any
life in them? I walked through New York yesterday and met with no real or living
person.
19
He took pleasure as always in the countryside, exploring the woods and rivers
with friends. During the summer, he enjoyed rowing and, in the winter, ice skating.
20

As his pupil, and later, his friend, Thoreau enjoyed reading Ralph Waldo Emersons
works also because Emerson encouraged the young men to whom he gave lectures to
perceive nature as a source of truths more profound than any that society makes available
21
.
He knew that the young men to whom he spoke were facing self doubt and social and
familial disapproval so it was easy to induce to them the question Can I be the true maker of
my life?. Amongst them we can count McCanless character, yet, we can only suppose that
the real life character, Christopher McCandless faced the same problems of social and
familial disapproval, while the film character surely had to deal with such issues, moreover,
he wanted to be a true maker of his life in which social conventions had no place.
Furthermore, Emerson was the one who led Thoreau to the other strong and open
minded personalities who took part in the meeting of the Transcendental Club.But what were
the Transcendental Clubs meetings about? The meetings allowed the members to discuss
philosophical issues, and as William E .Cain puts it, what they were doing:

represented an effort to break free from the heritage of Calvinism, which emphasized
mankinds innate sinfulness, and, furthermore, from philosophical rationalism, which
maintained that knowledge was independent of sense experience. Freedom, for the
Transcendentalists, meant overcoming the tyranny of everything exterior to the self.
22


The Transcendentalist writers were influenced by the writings of William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who in turn were inspired by German idealism; Thomas Carlyles
name can be mentioned here too, since during his tour in Europe, Emerson had the chance to

19
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Collectors Library, London, 2004, p. 23.
20
Ibid.
21
William E. Cain, p. 16.
22
William E. Cain, p. 17, [my italics].
13
meet the English philosopher and the above mentioned Romantic poets. Carlyle made a
pronounced use of Fichtes assertive Transcendental ego, the individual self merged with the
spirit that encompasses and transcends external nature.
23
In his writings, Thomas Carlyle
always promoted the model of an ideal conduct, dominated by sincerity and truth. Truth was
what Christopher McCandless was looking and asking for. He underlined the following line
from Henry David Thoreaus Walden Rather that love, than money, than fame, give me
truth.
24

Transcendentalism in America [] placed special value on conscience, imagination,
and personal autonomy
25
. It was what Chris tried to obtain with his act; he wanted to gain
personal autonomy and allowed his life to be shaped by circumstance. It is particularly
visible in the film, that Chris hadintensive gaze outward to a nature illuminated everywhere
by a higher transcendent reality
26

The German philosopher Fichte proposed a basic reality, that of the will or an ego
which intuits its own activity Universal Reason and rises above space and time. This
Transcendental ego produces nature and expresses itself in moral law. Furthermore, the
individuals inward sense of duty or moral consciousness is an expression of this absolute
purpose
27
. We sense the urge introspective meditation in the following lines from Thoreaus
Walden

Direct your eye sight inward, and youll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography.
28


According to Michael McLoughlin the word Transcendentalism was characterized by
any of the following words: enthusiastic, mystical, extravagant, impractical, ethereal,
supernatural, vague, abstruse, lacking in common sense. If there was one word to describe
Chris that would be enthusiastic; he constantly told his sister, Jan Burres, Wayne and later,
to Ronald Franz, the eighty two year old man who wanted to adopt Chris as his nephew,
about his journey. Chris wrote in one of his cards to Wayne the following: As for me, Ive

23
Michael McLoughlin, Dead Letters to the New World Melville, Emerson, and American Transcendentalism,
Routledge, New York, 2003, p. 11, [my italics].
24
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Collectors Library, London, 2004, p. 348.
25
William E. Cain , A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau, p. 18.
26
Ibid.
27
McLoughlin, p. 10.
28
Henry David Thoreau, p.338.
14
decided to live this life for some time to come. The freedom and simple beauty of it is just
too good to pass up.
29
while one of his journal entries describes his enthusiasm to have
taken this journey It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to
the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God is great to be alive! Thank you, Thank
you
30
. Charlie, an old man in whose trailer Chris stood for free, remembered that Chris
didnt like to be around many people, but he talked a lot about Alaska. And Jim Gallien, the
man who was driving four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker beside the
road, and gave him a ride till the Stampede Trail, says: He was determined. Real gung ho.
The word that comes to mind is excited. He couldnt wait to head out there and get started
31

Beside counting Emerson among his friends, and having met Walt Whitman, Thoreau
was also a good friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne and got well with his family. In a note book
entry, Hawthorne described Henry as a young man with much of the wild original nature
still remaining in him
32
. On the other hand, Jan Burres said that Chris told her he was
tramping around the country, having a big old adventure
33
. Jon Krakauer compared Alex to
James Joyces Stephen Dedalus, saying that he was alone. The author describes Chris,
while on the road and when reaching Alaska, by giving a quotation from Clarice Lispectors
first novel, Near to the Wild Heart

He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and
wild hearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and
tangle and veiled grey sunlight.
34


Thats what he was: Alexander Supertramp was a wild hearted rebel. He needed the
nature and the wild to be happy and free; to be himself. The same thing applies to Henry
David Thoreau. But the only thing that might be in the way of his happiness is loneliness. It
seems to me that it was inevitably that loneliness would be his only companion, since
Christopher McCandless, particularly while bearing the name Alexander Supertramp, was a
unique character. No one around him understood him and no one lived as passionately as he
did. More over, nobody knew about his plan, things started to worry Chris parents after they
discovered in July that their son moved out from his apartment in Atlanta by the end of May.

29
Jon Krakauer, p. 33.
30
Idem, p. 37.
31
Idem,p. 6, [my italics].
32
McLoughlin, p. 22.
33
McLoughlin, p. 30.
34
McLoughlin,,p.31, [my italics].
15
Of course, each one of us is unique in its own way, but Chris was a romantic idealist,
obstinate, determined to fulfill his aims, shy, courageous, with love for nature and simple
things. Walt, his father, said about his son that Chris was fearless even when he was little
[] he didnt think the odds applied to him. We were always trying to pull him back from
the edge
35
.
Nature and the wild were the environments where Chris would find calm and peace.
He was living like that by choice. During the short period he worked at McDonalds, Lori
Zarza, the second assistant manager, remembered that Chris never hung out with any of the
employees after work but, when he would have any kind of interaction with them, he was
talking about nature and trees.
Before reaching the conclusion of this chapter, we must stop at Alexander
Supertramps declaration of independence, on a sheet of weathered plywood spanning a
broken window, he wrote the following

TWO YEARS HE WALKS THE EARTH. NO PHONE. NO POOL. NO PETS. NO
CIGARETTES. ULTIMATE FREEDOM. AN EXTREMIST. AN AESTHETIC VOYAGER
WHOSE HOME IS THE ROAD. ESCAPED FROM ATLANTA. THOU SHLAT NOT
RETURN, CAUSE THE WEST IS THE BEST. AND NOW AFTER TWO RAMBLING
YEARS COMES THE FINAL AND GREATEST ADVENTURE. THE CLIMATIC BATTLE TO
KILL THE FALSE BEING WITHIN AND VICTORIOUSLY CONCLUDE THE SPIRITUAL
REVOLUTION. TEN DAYS AND NIGHTS OF FREIGHT TRAINS AND HITCHHIKING
BRING HIM TO THE GREAT WHITE NORTH. NO LONGER TO POISONED BY
CIVILIZATION HE FLEES, AND WALKS ALONE UPON THE LAND TO BECOME LOST
IN THE WILD
ALEXANDER SUPERTRAMP MAY 1992.
36


This passage says so many things about who he was, what he did and why he did it.
With this note, Chris defines himself even if he does it in the third persons voice. One has to
break away from himself, so as to see himself or herself in a mirror. He did what the French
would call le detachement de soi pour se voir en mirroir pour et mieux se comprendre.
Chris, writing in third person, creates a fictive character of himself, of his own voice. The
note also expresses his enthusiasm for being close in reaching and living his greatest

35
Jon Krakauer, p. 109.
36
Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, p. 163.
16
adventure, we sense his appetite for adventure and quest. He becomes the great Alaskan
adventurer as Ronald Franz describes him in the film.
THE CLIMATIC BATTLE TO KILL THE FALSE BEING WITHIN AND
VICTORIOUSLY CONCLUDE THE SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION is his way of expressing
the Transcendental ideal. The line is a proof that Henry David Thoreaus work had a great
influence over his life and naming Christopher McCandless as one Thoreaus disciples,
particularly while bearing the name Alexander Supertramp, is not an overreaction, nor far
away from the truth.
Furthermore, it describes his refusal of social conventions and its ideals. He would
rather walk alone in the land and in the wild, and have his own way of living, just livin,
as his character says in the film, rather than being part of the crazy society which surrounded
him.

1.2. The Wild Land

Moving on with another important element in this journey, I shall now like to focus
on the importance of the land. The land is not only the space that people fought, and still
fight for, or that people cultivate, and others buy, build or sell. Apart from the many
definitions given to this noun, the land signifies space and openness, and it has always given
a lot of opportunities.
The land is an important theme of this book, since it is very closely related to nature
and the wild. The same theme is very attentively explored in three of the films that this thesis
aims to analyze, Wild America (1997), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward
Henry Ford (2007), and Days of Heaven (1978).
In the middle of the 19
th
century, the land represented an important issue for the
Americans, since they were either fighting for it with the Mexicans, or drawing its borders
with the Canadians, either exploring it through the train trails which were all heading west. It
was all about trails on the land to explore the unknown and undiscovered and to dominate it
eventually. Alexander Supertramp was one of those who forged its own trail on the land so as
to discover it and discover himself in new circumstances, circumstances shaped, why not, by
the land.
As we know it, in the America of the 19
th
century and before that, most people made
their living from the land, just as Henry David Thoreau tried to do while living at Walden
17
Pond, he was gardening. He wrote: Let not to get a living by thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy
the land, but own it not
37

On the one hand, in May 1, 1841 the first wagon train, with forty-seven emigrants,
left for California from Independence, Missouri. On the other, travel to resorts was made
possible by the extension of the railroad. The same means of transportation took Chris to the
west side of the country, to Alaska. The railroad was a crucial sign of technological
transformation of American life to which Thoreau devotes critical analysis in Walden
38
.
In his book, Thoreau devotes particular attention to the sounds surrounding Walden
Pond, amongst them the singing birds and the locomotives whistle and the rumbling of
wagons over bridges in the evening. He was impressed by the machine, but hated its effects
on the land and its role in promoting commerce and undermining personal freedom
39
. In
my opinion, there is a contradiction between the so called undermining of personal freedom
and the travel made possible by the railroad; travel which meant discovery, movement and
freedom. From one perspective, there was freedom and ease in movement, distant places
became more accessible, thus the people of the times broadened their horizons, both literally
and metaphorically.
Through Alexander Supertramps journey, both the book and film explore the
American land with its forests, mountains, cities, suburbs, small remote villages, rivers,
lakes, oceans, and deserts. As Saad Chakali put it in his article Une nouvelle Amrique
encore inapprochable, in the book, but particularly visible in the film, is the exploration of
the geographical and social variations of America, which Alex encounters on his way to
Alaska. He meets people from various social backgrounds: the two ageing hippies, Jan
Burres and Bob; Wayne Westerbeg, a man in his mid-thirties, a machinist, ace mechanic,
licensed airplane pilot, computer programmer and, as Jon Krakauer described him, talented
in getting in trouble with the law. Just before giving Chris a job at his grain elevator, Wayne
was arrested by the FBI for building and selling black boxes, which illegally unscramble
satellite-television transmission. Despite of this, Wayne was a good hearted man, he gave
Alex a job to earn money to continue his journey; the two eventually became very close. It is
as if Wayne substitutes the father, for the two get along very well; he supports, and
encourages the boy in the activities that he broaches. He becomes his protector, just as later,
Ronald Franz, the war veteran who had lost his wife and son while he was on the Okinawa
battlefield. The old man got along with the young hitchhiker; Franz taught him how to carve

37
Henry David Thoreau, p. 221, [my italics].
38
William E. Cain, p. 27.
39
Idem, p. 28.
18
in leather. He became very attached to Alex, and regarded him as his own son, the fact that
he wanted to adopt him as his grandson came as no surprise, but the boy refused this. Franzs
decision to live freely and enjoying the world at Alexs advice stays as a proof that Alex
influenced with his personality and his deed the ones around him. The 82 year old bought
himself a GMC duravan and moved out from Salton City, living on the road till his death.
Alexander Supertramp had his own relationship with the land. Sadly, he is accused of
disrespect for the land, which led to his death. Before Alex left Jim Galliens pickup, the
Alaskan gave him an old pair of rubber work boots, together with a piece of paper with his
phone number on it, and told the boy to give him a call if he gets alive out of it, and theyll
talk about the boots restitution. This is where Chris/Alexs journey starts. He was
unprepared from the very start. Apart from the boots, he had poor food supplies; he lacked a
large caliber rifle, a map, a compass and an axe. He should have been aware that the Alaskan
climate was hostile and harsh, he should have known that living entirely off the country and
without mastering crucial skills would be risky if not dangerous, yet he managed to survive
for sixteen weeks on little more than his wits and ten pounds of rice.
The author believes that 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.
40
, yet, he will soon start to focus more on the outside than on the
inside, since it would have been impossible for him to survive in that climate and in that
environment without profiting and trying to explore the potential of the surrounding area
either by hunting or by what the land had to offer.
Alex found himself doing the same things as boy scouts learn to do, namely he
developed his outdoor skills. There was no need to build himself a shelter since the bus was
already there, but he needed to feed himself with more then just rice; the book of wild edible
plats that he carried with himself was useful, but the wild plants provided him very few
calories. Here starts the real adventure, the survival in the wild. Chris is the human facing the
non-human. He found himself without a map, dealing with primordial conditions, having to
feed himself with what nature provided him.
He engaged in one of the oldest human occupations, hunting. He made records of this
activity, he noted down the number of birds he shot, or took photographs of the rabbits he
hunted down, but his greatest achievement in this field came with the killing of the moose,
yet this was followed by one of the most tragic events, as noted down in his journal: maggots
invaded the moose meat and smoking proved ineffective.

40
Krakauer, Jon, Into the Wild, p. 183.
19
As Emerson puts it in his 1836 essay Nature, Nature is a setting that fits equally
well a comic or a mourning piece
41
.With this book, and this film, we witness a mourning
piece, as Chris becomes the victim of his own mistakes and stubbornness, refusing to obey
and follow the laws of nature and of the land. Christopher McCandless died of starvation,
alone, in the wild.

























41
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, Addresses, and Lectures,The Riverside Edition, George Routledge and Sons,
London, 1973, p.15.
20
2. Sean Penns Into the wild a film that influenced a generation

I now walk Into the Wild is the line which can be read in the credit scene of Sean
Penns 2007 Into the Wild. Emile Hirsch plays Christopher McCandless, the 22 year old who
leaves his family and friends to embark on a journey of self discovery, refusing the social
conventions awaiting after his graduation from Emory University. Chris takes his yellow
Datsun and heads west, planning to reach Alaska. His car is damaged after a flash-flood, and
Alex starts hitchhiking. Amongst those who picked him up were a couple of hippies, Jan
Burres and Bob
42
, played by Catherine Keener and Brian H. Dierker. Later on, he works on a
farm for a guy named Wayne, played by Vince Vaughn. Alex meets Jan and Rainy, again, at
Slab City, the place where he wakes a local young girls interest, Tracy, played by Kristin
Steward. After spending some time with his old acquaintances helping them out with the
book sell and preparing for his goal, Alaska, Alex hits the road again and hikes into Anza
Borrego Desert State Park. One of the last persons whom he meets and influences, before
walking into the wild, is Ronald Franz, role interpreted by Hal Holbrook, which earned him
an Academy award nomination for best performance by an actor in a supporting role.
While Chris is living his life somewhere his parents, Billie and Walt McCandless,
played by Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt, are back home worrying for their son under
the eyes of their daughter, Carine, played by Jena Malone.
Sean Penn isnt at its first directorial attempt but this film brought him many acclaims
from the critics and the public as well. He worked for ten years on this project and received
the books author support and guidance in screening the story. When they were first
approached by Penn with the screening of their sons story, Billie and Walt McCandless
refused the collaboration. Ten years went by, and the parents announced Sean Penn that they
were ready to see their sons story on the screen.
When one decides to put on screen the real life story of a person, this certainly brings
some responsibilities. According to ric Gautier, the films cinematographer, Sean Penn
wrote himself the script, and worked at it for six years. He hired the French director of
photography because of his previous works, the most significant one, for its similarity of
theme and subject, is Walter Salles 2004 The Motorcycle Diaries. Penns Into the Wild is a
meticulous documentary fiction in which.

42
Bob is the name of Jan Burres companion in the book, while in the film, the name of Rainey is given, played by
Brian H. Dierker. Dierker was working as technical consultant for white-water rafting scenes, but Sean Penn cast
him at Emile Hirschs suggestion.
21
The camera is an important instrument in this motion picture as it stands for the
authors, point of view. He tries to follow Chris development through the story, engaging
the audience in the story. Of course, the camera presents one point of view and we attribute
human characteristics to a camera/ believe that it provides us with a human point of view.
43

In the history of cinema, thousands of films were made about characters that engaged
in some sort of adventure. Thus, this story seemed not to bring anything new; it might have
been easily regarded as a clich or an overused theme for a film, yet, the novelty arises not
from the subject but from the fresh experience of humanity thats evoked.
44

David Roberts, in his article for National Geographic, called the book classic tale of
adventure gone wrong. The silver screen adaptation of the adventure and the life on the road
of Alexander Supertramp, is full of energy and dynamism, so are the scenes; each one builds
up Chris adventurous and less mundane story. The moments when the film gets dull are
almost inexistent, but there are those when it calms down so as to present Chris/Alex self
introspect and contemplation of nature and the wild.
As Saad Chakali put in an article for the French magazine Vertigo, the dynamism of
the film is also brought by the steep alternation of large frames presenting the landscape and
the environment with that of close ups of the perceiving hero.

. la relle puissance esthtique du film, qui repose sur un montage dont lexpressivit
nvralgique, lectrisant le strict rgime reprsentatif et narratif, produit une grande forme tout
en contractions et dilatations. Cest par exemple lalternance abrupte de plans trs larges sur
la nature perue et de trs gros plans sur le visage du hros percevant.
45


The close-ups capture either the contagious enthusiasm of the hero; his contemplation
of nature, the moments of discovery of virgin places, isolated and remote from society and
civilization, or the panicked and scared look directed to the camera when he realizes that
there is no way out of the wild and death is near, a moment which represents the climax of
the end scene.
This dynamism is brought by the sequence of peaceful and tranquil scenes of
introspection and contemplation, alternated with the powerful scenes presenting the turning

43
William Brown, Chapter Three, Man without a movie camera-movies without men, in Film Theory and
Contemporary Hollywood Movies, edited by Warren Buckland, Routledge, New York, 2009, p. 80.
44
Stanley Kauffman, Regarding Film Criticism and Comment, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore,
2001, p. 3.
45
Saad Chakali, Une nouvelle Amrique encore inapprochable, Into the Wild, Sean Penn, 2007, Vertigo. No. 35, p.
9.
22
points in Chris journey, such as the moment when he did rapids starting on the Colorado
river all the way to the Grand Canyon, or his attempt to cross the frozen Teklanika river; his
mothers nightmare of seeing and hearing her son crying for help, or even the train running
on the train tracks at the very beginning of the film. Saad Chakali described these scenes also
as points discontinues; these discontinuous positions are brought together and are given a
continuous flow by the montage.
The montage is the process which confers a film its grammar
46
and aesthetic.
According to Frdric Strauss, the montage has two simultaneous objectives: one is to
organize the story and the other one is to imprint the film a certain rhythm and to create a
formal dynamics. Each film has to find its own rhythm. Thus, Sean Penns film dynamic
rhythm is created by the alternation of panoramic scenes; close ups and focuses on details
and small movements. To Chakali, Into the Wilds montage is an expresive one which
focuses on the granular of images so as to play with the sensibility of textures Cest un
montage expressif qui insiste sur le granuleux des images pour pouvoir jouer de la sensibilit
des textures, corces vgtales ici, bouillonnement liquide l, parois rocheuses ailleurs.
47

On the other hand, he goes as far as describing the panoramic scenes as cosmic,
rendered by a cosmic montage. For instance, at the beginning of the film we see Alex
climbing out of Jim Galliens truck and the camera is following them from the above, filming
them in the snowy Alaskan environment. The scene is set. With the juxtaposition of the exact
words written by Chris in his last postcard to Wayne Westerberg, we see him walking into
the wild.
The dynamism of the film is also constructed by its non-linearity and fragmentation,
and as Stanley Kauffman puts it, when significant literary antecedents are involved,
comparisons with their film versions must press on us if not for complete fidelity of detail
then certainly for similarity of tone
48
. Sean Penn provides complete fidelity of detail; he was
fascinated by Chris McCandlesss story and he devoted himself for the directing of this story
just as Krakauer did for the writing of the book. The director filmed most parts of the scenes
in the exact locations mentioned in the book, except for the bus scenes. Out of respect for
Chris and the McCandless family, the director abandoned the idea of shooting at the exact
location; instead they built a set with the replica of the 142 bus. The story of the film follows
very closely the content of the book, almost in the way a documentary would present a story,

46
Frdric Strauss, Anna Huet, Cum se fac filmele, Editura Humanitas, Bucureti, 2008, p.72. [my translation].
47
Saad Chakali, Une nouvelle Amrique encore inapprochable, Into the Wild, Sean Penn, 2007, p.11.
48
Stanley Kauffman Regarding Film Criticism and Comment, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore,
2001, p. 21.
23
yet, we can regard this motion picture as a fictional documentary. Sean Penn also managed to
preserve the books tone, and it seems to me, critics have also agreed that, inevitably, the
screening of this book required a dynamic tone.
The film reduces Krakauers eighteen chapters to five: Chapter 1: My Own Birth,
Chapter 2: Adolescence, Chapter 3: Manhood, Chapter 4: Family and the final chapter:
Getting of Wisdom. We notice that the film is logically divided into these five chapters which
constitute, each, a phase in Chris journeys development; we see his progress from his own
birth to the getting of wisdom while finally living into the wild. Nevertheless, the film is
non-linear since at the beginning of it we see the protagonist already in Alaska, without us
knowing how he got there. This induces the idea that his journey is about to start from that
point on, but then, scenes of Chris graduation appear, he is celebrating it with his family at a
restaurant. In the following scenes we see him sending his money to Oxfam and destroying
his identity cards. Yet, his escape is announced by the sisters voiceover he risked what
could have been a relentlessly lonely path, but found company in the characters of the books
he loved It was inevitable that Chris would break away. And when he did, he would do it
with characteristic immoderation. In the next scene, following these words, we see him on
the road, burning his money, meeting the ageing hippies, when, again, the sisters flashback
is inserted; the film shows us a family reunion, while we hear her telling us about her brother.
The film goes on like this: from presenting a present moment, it goes back to past memories;
most of them, narrated by the sister, and it comes back to scenes in which Chris is shown
alone, wandering. The sisters voice over and the fragmentation of the story are two
elements which can be described with the help of the French theorist Giles Deleuze. As Saad
Chakali, put it in his article for the French magazine, Vertigo, the film makes a disjunctive
synthesis, and we see different points of view brought together in the film, very often on the
same scene.
It seems like the film is interplaying what Gilles Deleuze would call movement image
and time-image. He uses these terms in his two books about cinema, Cinema1: The
Movement Image
49
and Cinema 2: The Time Image.
50
According to David Martin Jones, for
the French theoretician, the movement image

is characterized by the unbroken sensory-motor continuity of its protagonists. In other
words, in the movement-image characters are able to act in order to influence their situation,

49
Original title L'Image-mouvement. Cinma 1, Les ditions de Minuit, 1983.
50
Original title L'Image-temps. Cinma 2, published in 1985.
24
usually to their advantage. Accordingly, the time of the narrative is edited around the actions
of the protagonist.
51


To him Continuity is created by the actions of characters whose stories we follow
52
.
In the film, we follow Chris actions; he is acting in order to influence his situation, he
improves his condition by taking this journey; he chooses to take his destiny into his hands.
Yet, there is an interrupted continuity in his story, in the sense that we see him reaching the
aim of his act, namely the freedom of the Alaskan wilderness, but the action is interrupted by
the sisters narration. Carine is not able to act for her brother anymore, but she can explain
his deed so as it wont be misunderstood. Her voice over comes as a completion.
The other term that Deleuze uses is the time image, which, Jones says, is
characterized by a disruption of the protagonists sensory- motor continuity. Unable to
physically react to events in order to influence their situation, protagonists in the time- image
begin to wander without a definite sense of purpose or goal.
53

Jones gives the example of Antonionis or Angelopoulos films, in which the time-
image emerges in the extended long take where the camera remains focused over landscapes
without a moving character who might guide the viewers eye gaze. This way the director
makes sure that he is presenting time, in the film, in its own right, thus In these instances,
editing becomes discontinuous, and does not provide a logical progression of events, as
disconnected spaces pass before our eyes without the agency of a character to provide us
with a linear temporal focus
54

Something similar happens in Into the Wild, where the spectator does not follow the
logical progression of events, and disconnected spaces such as Chris family house and him,
on the margin of the road, pass before our eyes. But in this film there is an agency of a
character that provides us with information about the other character that we see in the
image. That agency is the sisters candid voice, juxtaposed over scenes in which her older
brothers character is filmed from distance, from afar, walking down the road, or on wheat
fields. She acts like the narrator who brings back the past times and guides the spectator.
David Roberts put it in his article for the National Geographic that If anything, those voice-
overs intensify the picture of family dysfunction that lay at the heart of Chris's anguish.

51
David Martin Jones, French philosophy meets contemporary U.S. Cinema, in Film Theory in Contemporary
Hollywood Movies, edited by Warren Buckland, Routledge, New York, 2009, p. 215.
52
Ibid.
53
Jones, p. 216.
54
Jones, p. 216.
25
From the same article, we learn that the director Sean Penn, Carine McCandless,
Sharon Olds, who helped the director with the narration, and actress Jena Malone, who plays
the role of the sister in the film, met in San Francisco to brainstorm so as to produce the
extended voice-overs in Carine's head that carry much of the expository burden of the film.
She, in her turn, chose to leave her family too but in a more private way, in her words
I went away too. I left. There's just no movie about it. There is a movie about her brothers
story, and she played an important role in it, both as real life person and as a film character.
In the sixth chapter of Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies, edited by Warren
Buckland, Barry Salt makes an analysis of the most popular films of 1999. In the respective
chapter we read: My impression is that the use of narration to power the story has become
more common in the last couple of the decades than it was fifty years ago, since a quick
check on a list of films from 1946-51 shows less than 5 percent having narrated stories.
55

Into the Wild belongs to the same category; the sisters narration is used to power the story
with the presence of her sincerity and sentiment.
On the other hand, Jean Michel Frodon, in his article from the French film magazine
Cahiers du Cinma said that Into the Wild creates its own territory which is structured on
four cardinal points, namely la vision du monde de McCandless, celle de Sean Penn,
lenqute documentaire et la dimension pique du cinma americain.
56


2.1. Nature and Symbols in a Journey into the Wild

According to the second edition of Elseviers Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery, the
word journey is associated with the idea of adventure, desire for discovery or change, and it
is related to running and (day)dreaming.
When dealing with images, one cannot overlook symbols, apart from Chris journey,
which is symbolic itself; I shall focus in the following pages on important symbols and their
meaning with the help of screenshots taken from the film.
We see Christopher McCandless walking, hitchhiking, paddling, climbing, almost
always moving, but rarely in one place, and when he does sit in one place, he is
contemplating and is moved by the scenery lying in front of his eyes. In an interview for the
National Geographic, Sean Penn admits that Sharon Olds, who helped him with the narration

55
The Shape of 1999: The Stylistics of American Movies at the End of the Century, p. 142.
56
Frodon, Jean-Michel, 2008. Into the Wild de Sean Penn, Pas de pays pour les hommes jeunes, Cahiers de
Cinma/ January.

26
in the film, articulated well the fact that on a pie chart Chris life contained darker and
brighter issues with which he was confronted but the biggest slice is a wanderlust that
everybody can identify with. Whether that wanderlust comes from trauma, family, or from
some purely positive place, it ties in with our unified desire to set out along that road.
57

An important element in each journey is the road. As noted down by Lars Erik Larson
in his article Free Ways and Straight Roads: The Interstates of Sal Paradise and 1950s
America Spatially, the road is cast as almost exclusively masculine: a place for the search
for a father
58
. Most of the characters that start a journey on the road are males just as in four
of the five discussed films of the thesis; Alexander Supertramps journey can be easily
regarded as a search for the father. He is not orphaned of father, but his conflictual and
rebellious relationship with Walt was one of the reasons he got on the road. On the other
hand, there is another line which, although it was made to characterize the life on the road of
Sal Paradise, it describes the life on the road of Alex Supertramp given the fact that he
refused to be an obedient civilian:

While traveling ( as Sal calls it) the protective road where nobody knows us (224),
spatial anonymity gives them the ability to flee social responsibilities, communities, and laws
at a moments notice, all in the exuberant desire to find out what everybody was doing all
over the country.
59


It seems that, alongside Alex, Sal Paradise can also be named one of the followers of
Thoreaus Civil Disobedience. Chris was on the road and made sure that nobody knew him
by adopting a new name, but the road wasnt always very protective with him since he was
either very often asked by the ones he met about his family and his background, either beaten
up, lost his car, got arrested.
As Chris himself said in the film It should not be denied that being footloose has always
exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law
and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom. And the road has always led west.
60
The road
symbolizes 1. life, progress, adventure: a. connected with pilgrim[] 2.experience 3.

57
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/news/into-the-wild.html, last consulted on May 14
th
2012, 2: 54
PM.
58
Lars Erik Larson , Free Ways and Straight Roads: The Interstates of Sal Paradise and 1950s America, in Whats
your road, man?- Critical Essays on Jack Kerouacs On the Road, Edited by Hillary Holladay and Robert Holton,
The Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University, 2009, p.42.
59
Idem. p.40.
60
www.imdb.com/title/tt0758758/quotes, last consulted on May 17
th
, 2010, at 5:57 PM.
27
difficulty, according to the Elseviers Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. We already know
that Chris was lively, adventurous and an entrepreneur from a very early age.

Fig. 1 Screenshots from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)
With this journey he tried to make a progress, which wasnt a material one, but a
spiritual one which could only be achieved through this experience. It is clear that it wasnt
difficult for him to live on the road, he quickly transformed the difficulties into something
fun: such was the case with the damaged Datsun, the absence of a shower, but the absence of
constant food supplies proved fatal.
28
His aim was to reach and live in the most ancient of human conditions, in the wild,
surrounded by nature. According to the same dictionary of symbols the word wilderness
has two references; the first one would be 1. Hebrew: the wanderings in the wilderness
associated with the purity of faith and the second one would be voluntary exile from
luxury. These two senses describe very well Alexander Supertramp, and his wandering can
be associated with the purity of faith, his purity of faith, faith in finding the truth, also his
choice to give up the wellbeing and embrace the life of the hobos.
The land shaped Alexs path through plains and fields, rivers and hills, and forests.
The field is the symbol of 2. space, freedom from restraint, unlimited possibilities of
action.
61
. After abandoning his flooded Datsun, Chris starts walking, wandering across the
country. We see him walking in the summer sun, on fields which bring him the freedom of
enjoying a shower and the fun of shaving under an agricultural sprinkler. He also got the
possibility to work on a grain field and a grain elevator for Wayne.
.
Fig. 2 Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)
After setting his camp at bus 142, Chris starts to accommodate himself with the
environment: he begins to hunt, improvises a shower, and explores the Alaskan surroundings,
the home of the cold, of the forests and mountains. According to Elseviers Dictionary of
Symbols and Imagery, the mountain is regarded as 1. the realm of meditation (height-
meditation): a. mysticism: the opposite of plains of reality, b.[], c wisdom; high thought,
but still on Earth (W. Blake)[] 2. solitariness: a. The Mountain of Salvation: refuge
from the outer world, from the everyday mediocre existence[] 9. freedom: Thou shalt be
as free As mountain winds
62
In the film, we see Alex climbing up a mountain in Alaska.
By doing so, he wants not only to discover the surroundings, enjoy nature and the view, but

61
Ad de Vries, Elseviers Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. Second Enlarged Edition by Ad de Vries, Revised
and Updated by Arthur De Vries, Oirschot, The Netherlands, 2004, p. 221.
62
Idem. p. 394, [my italics].
29
the actor (Emile Hirsch) manages to express the joy for achieving his goal for finally
founding the truth and the freedom he longed after. But up there, he is solitary, and the only
thing thats left for him is the realm of meditation. We see in him the manifestation of the
romantic freedom of those who contemplate.

Fig. 3 Screenshot taken from the film Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)
Towards the end of the film, Alex is enthusiastically climbing up a hill in the desert
inviting Mr. Franz to join him so as he can share the view with him. This not only proves his
love for nature and people like him, but the hill is the 3. place of meditation: Others apart
sat on a hill retrieved in thoughts more elevate and reasoned high, Of providence,
foreknowledge, will, and fate( Milton, Par. Lost 2, 557. Ff).
63
, this also proves Chris/
Alexs interest in meditation.
While he is climbing up that mountain, the camera does not show his perspective. The
point of view shots, as Barry Salt categorized them, are rare; medium shots (MS), medium
close ups (MCU) and big close ups (BCU) are preferred instead. The camera is placed in
front of Alex, so as to always capture his reaction at what he sees. In most of the cases, the
camera is merging him into the natural and wild scenery, confirming and reassuring us, the
spectators, but also the main character, that he belongs to that particular place.
Moving on to another natural element encountered in this film but very present also
in the rest of the films that deal with the theme of journey - the forest is associated with 2.
hiding and 4. the home of the outlaws
64
. It is not the case with Chris to be named an
outlaw, but more likely a marginal character, not considered important, just as the homeless
or the hobos, since he gave up the wellbeing and the financial stability conferred by his
family and decided to live freely on the road, in nature, without belonging to any privileged

63
Ad de Vries, Elseviers Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. Second Enlarged Edition by Ad de Vries, Revised
and Updated by Arthur De Vries, Oirschot, The Netherlands, 2004, p. 303.
64
Idem. p. 240.
30
social category. The forest provides him with wood for fire to keep himself warm during the
cold, Alaskan nights; food, for he was hunting birds too, and a pleasant, cooling escape from
the weary, hot sun that was accompanying him on the road.

Fig. 4 Screenshot taken from the film Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)
The images above also depict the places and the land on which the story unfolds:
from the open territory of the plain, the grain fields, and the desert the last one symbolizing
the empty space to that of the close, protective, yet, luxuriant and rich dcor of the forest.
Saad Chakali said that the film brings a subjective aesthetic esthtique subjectiviste, cest
une esthtique vitaliste au vu de laquelle toute image relve dun processus nergtique.
This also confirms not only the dynamism of the story but the energy delivered by the images
and the actors performance.
The film starts with a black screen on which an excerpt of a poem from Lord Byron is
inserted
There is pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man less, but nature more
65


The fragment was found underlined in Chris journal. The choice to put these lines on
the screen sets the tone of the film from the very beginning and induces in the viewer the idea
that he is about to witness the journey of a romantic hero. To stay faithful to its discontinuity,
this is followed by the mothers nightmare of hearing her son crying out for help, which only
induces the idea that something might have happened, but the main character is not yet

65
[my italics].
31
presented. From the unopened, still, nocturnal and private space of the parents bedroom,
contrasting with the previous scene, the film (dis)continues to that of the moving train in the
cold, open, Alaskan territory. The character is not yet introduced, but at a closer focus to
details, we read a name written with chalk on the doors of a freight train: Alexander
Supertramp April 1992. The time and protagonist are introduced by the small text, and the
train is slowly taking the viewers into the place, setting it up.
The scenes in which Chris leaves the cars behind are panoramic, most of the times;
the camera tracks the protagonist, and other times, is zooming in or out. After a panoramic
scene in which the protagonist, Alex, is built in and unified with the scenery, the camera
follows him while walking in the snow and ends up focusing on his face; it gives a big close
up. According to Barry Salt, big close ups are used for intimate images. The intimate images
of Into the Wild present Chris reactions at the sight of the wild scenery, his determination to
continue the journey and to walk into the wild, his ambition and stubbornness.

2. 2. The Real Light of Into the Wild

So far, just by looking at all the inserted images which illustrate the characteristics of
the film, one can immediately perceive the realistic lighting. Everything is filmed in such a
manner to make it seem real, natural. In the 1999 films analyzed by Barry Salt in his article
The Shapes of 1999 a large proportion of them had colour bias applied to all their scenes for
expressive or stylistic purposes. This is not the case with Into the Wild, where the natural
lightning was exploited as much as possible for stylistic purposes. According to ric Gautier,
the films cinematographer, in an interview for the French magazine, Premiere, he said that it
was the directors wish to use the natural lightning at its maximum, with the exception of one
scene: the final one, when Chris is in the bus and the sun shines through the window. It was
too complicated to preserve and capture on screen that specific lightning, so they used
artificial lightning. Overall, we see the characteristics of a film devoted to realism, filmed in
the exact places where Chris spent his life and where he died, having the features of a
documentary but the arrangement of scenery and the properties to represent the place where
the movie is enacted are those of a fictional film. The same cinematographer is describing
the filming process to Cahiers du Cinma in the following words

[] jai ador faire exatement le contraire : partir du plan, de ce quexige le mieux
chaque plan, changer de technique de prise de vues aussi souvent que la situation le suggre,
32
en cherchant surtout faire partager les sensations phisiques, la chaleur, le froid,
limpression disolement, le raport ce qui est trs fugace ou le contraire prsent
pour lternit mais sans aucune mysticisme, de manire trs concrte. Cette approche
matrielle na rien de naturaliste, nous ne tournons pas un documentaire.
66


From this passage we also conclude that not only the natural environment was
important, but also the bodys response to the environment. If the close ups captured the
enthusiasm, the surprise, the sadness and meditation on Alexs face and in his eyes, it seems
that the long shots managed to capture Alexs attempt to adjust to the life on the road, to the
cold climate and to that of the poor nutrition. We see him beaten up by one of the railroads
guards, we watch him trying to cross the frozen river, a moment which causes physical shock
to the body, and then we notice how his body gradually lost weight.
The bodys reactions to the wild and natural environment being presented, in its turn,
the essence of the natural conditions through which the body undergoes changes cannot be
overlooked. In his article for Vertigo, a French magazine which promotes independence,
innovation and diversity in cinema, by now the very often quoted Saad Chakali, says that the
rocky textures depicted in the scenes in which Chris is presented on the top of the mountain,
or while reading on the top of a cliff by the seaside, climbing the rocky hill in the desert,
paddling down the Grand Canyon, or, the other times fluid textures present in the scenes in
which Chris overcomes his fear of water and swims in the ocean, or those in which he is
paddling, or trying to cross the Teklanika river, or the wooden essences of the scenes in
which he is walking in the forest or those when he is collecting firewood contribute to the
aesthetics of the film. I may add the luminous and sunny element that is commonly present in
most of the scenes and to which Sean Penn devoted exclusive scenes.
Realism and Romanticism are both to be sensed in this motion picture, in a
discontinuity narrated by a candid voiceover, one of a popular means to present a moving
image unfolding before our eyes. Using natural light and filming it in the real locations, the
director, Sean Penn, guided the viewers eye towards natural and Romantic elements,
brought together in a film full of energy and dynamism, a film which influenced a
generation.



66
Frodon, Jean-Michel, 2008. Into the Wild de Sean Penn, Pas de pays pour les hommes jeunes, Cahiers de
Cinma/ January.

33
3. A Portrait of the Wandering Hero

This chapter is dedicated to a comparative analysis between the story, images, motifs,
and character typologies present in the film Into the Wild and four other selected films. This
comparative analysis is relevant, since it comes as a proof of the wanderlust of the
American hero particularly depicted in films.
The five films chosen represent a portrait of the American wandering hero in film.
As a common compositional rule, the narratives of Into the Wild (2007) and Days of Heaven
(1978), Wild America (1997), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Henry Ford
(2007), Wendy and Lucy (2008) are mapped on the idea of journey.
The first film to be presented, from this cluster of four, is perhaps less artistic than
the rest of them, but I selected it because of the theme that it tackles, that of a journey into the
wild, and the life on the road, presented in a somehow childish, innocent and comic manner;
these characteristics being mainly conferred by the age of the protagonists.
Wild America (1997) is an adventure comedy directed by William Dear. The film
presents the story of the three Stoufer brothers: Marty, the oldest, played Scott Bairstow,
Mark, the middle one, played by Devon Sawa, and the youngest of them, Marshall, played by
Jonathan Taylor Thomas; they live in a small country town in Arkansas, on a farm. In the
1960s, while their father was gone working, the boys spent their time playing ludicrous
games such as tying the youngest brother to a chair, and then, letting it down in a pool where
he had to free himself while his older brothers were throwing firecrackers in the pool and
always filming these experiments. As Marshall says in the film when they rolled that
camera, things got a little crazy; Marty was the one who used to film the experiments with
an 8 mm camera.
The film has a linear action narrated by one of the characters, the youngest brother.
Before the actual adventure would start, Marshall is presenting his family and himself: the
mother loved wild animals and took care of them, almost adopting them; Marty Jr., the oldest
brothers favorite guy was Ernest Hemingway. Hed like to think of himself as a great
hunter and adventurer [], the middle brother, Mark, likes to think of himself as a man of
action, and the youngest, as himself admits, (Me, I,) was a dreamer. So again, we meet
the character of the dreamer, of the adventurer and that of the man of action, even if Mark
was regarded as a man of action in his relation with girls, him too participates in the
adventure the oldest brother was determined to start that early summer.
34
After setting his eyes on a handy camera which came from Channel Two in Little
Rock, and while having a look through it, Marty realizes that the camera represents their key
out of the small town, and a key to accomplish their dream of seeing their documentaries on
TV. The oldest of Stoufer brothers announces his father about his intentions Dad, Ive
decided Im gonna move out. Go on the road and film animals. Seeing his son so
determined, Marty Sr. lends him the money for the camera and the trip. In a conversation
with his youngest brother, Marty recalls about what Hemingway said about killing animals,
I wanna shoot them with this,(looking through the newly purchased handy camera), instead,
then youngest brother curiously asks Where would you go?, and quickly receiving a very
decided answer from the dreamy young film maker Firstout there, then Africa.
The two older Stoufer brothers leave their hometown in an old car, without knowing
that their youngest sibling in the back. They find out about his presence because he asks
Mark to stop reading from Wild Animal Attacks, a book which the boys were carrying with
them for entertainment. Just as in Into the Wild, in this film the characters are determined to
start the journey because of their love for nature, the wild, and wild animals, but also
literature; literature and literary figures, in Marty Stoufers case, Ernest Hemingway, or
specialty literature such as Wild Animal Attacks and Outdoor Life influenced the
protagonists intentions. The wanderlust of these characters and, why not, of others in the
films as well, is due to the vast territory of the country which comprises all the geographical
forms, consequently many things to see.
The natural elements are present in this film too; the forest disguises the first
dangerous situation that the boys have to face, namely the episode in which the first real
filming experience occurs. The boys look for a great sized alligator to capture on camera.
Instead, they not only get to film it, but they also endanger their lives, giving the entire
experience the real characteristics of a journey in which nothing is planned, anything might
come up, you just have to be prepared, and in Marty Stoufers case, the camera must roll.
They camped in the woods and Mark started, again, reading about wild animals, about a
grizzly bear story which scared the youngest brother. This confirms that the forest is the
place where the fears of the unconscious are revealed, and where terrors and monsters find
their place, or rather monsters hide. The Elseviers Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery gives
the following for the word forest c. the unconscious; terrors and monsters in it represent
the perilous aspect of the unconscious.
Another thing that the story of Stoufer brothers shares with the story of Christopher
McCandless is their relationship with the father. It seems to me that the Stoufer brothers
35
feared their father, and wanted to prove him that they were able to get by themselves. In this
film the figure of Marty Sr. is an authoritative one: both the mother and the boys ask his
permission when taking important decisions; the boys stop their childish habits and go back
to their work on the farm or at their fathers carburetor shop when he is at home; of course
they are not pleased with this work and dream to escape in the big wide world.
In the character of Walt McCandless we also perceive the figure of the authoritative
person; because he is more authoritative as a husband then he is as a father. He loses his
authority over his son, given that Chris went away from home without asking for his
permission, nor letting him know about his plans. The only authority that we perceive in the
film can be seen in the fight scene from the bedroom, when Walt hits his wife, witnessed by
Carine and Chris. This is presented as a flashback and Walts gesture, seems to me, exhibits
rather lack of authority since only those who are unconfident about their authority use
violence.
The two figures of the father from Into the Wild and Wild America have in common the
act of lying, creating a false image of themselves in front of their sons: Marty Sr. made his
youngest son think that he was a great pilot, whereas he never got the chance to fly a plane,
only to repair them, while Walt McCandless hid his other family, with his first wife. When
Chris found out about this, he got even madder at his father. His journey came as a response
to his father act, that is why, when Jan asks him if his folks know where he is, Chris says
Im going to paraphrase Thoreau here ... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame,
than fairness... give me truth.
Another similarity between the young adventurers resides in their refusal to ask their
parents for help and money. After they got robbed, Mark suggests asking their parents to
send them money, but Marty responds No money to send. We gotta rely on ourselves.
Chris had the same attitude, he wanted to rely on himself, and if there was money he needed,
he used it to get to Alaska.
The last common theme of Wild America and Into the Wild represents the
characters target: they boys aim to reach Alaska, only the Stoufer brothers manage to turn
back home, and werent facing solitude, while Chris/ Alex had no constant company and
tragically died.
Of course, we can look at the very first similarity of the two films which can be
immediately noticed in their title: Into the Wild and Wild America, the word wild marks
from the very beginning the type of story that we are about to discover: the wanderings of
pure, youthful, adventurous, wild souls.
36
Moving on to the second film which shares the theme of wandering with Into the
Wild, is Kelly Reicharts 2008 Wendy and Lucy which presents the story of a young woman,
Wendy, played by Michelle Williams, who leaves home aiming to reach Alaska so she can
find there a job. On her way, she makes a stop in a small town, there her car breaks down.
She sleeps in it, then, the next day she goes to procure something to eat for herself, and her
dog, Lucy. She has no money; she ties her dog in front of a supermarket and goes in, but in
there she is forced to shoplift. She gets caught, and while she is taken to the police station
and spends the night there, her dog disappears. From here on, starts Wendys search for the
dog. She is looking all over the place for Lu: on the street, crying out her name, in the
woods, she is even requests the dog shelters help. Meanwhile, Wendy is sleeping in her
damaged car, in the woods, after the car was removed, and receives help from a parking lots
old security guard. Eventually Lucy is found, but Wendy decides to leave her beloved dog at
the house of the nice man who found her because, there, she can enjoy the nice yard.
Now that her 1988 Accord couldnt be repaired, Wendy decides that it would be better for
the dog remain in that place. The film ends with Wendy taking the freight train to Alaska all
by herself.
Wendy and Lucy is included in the category of independent films. As Yannis
Tzioumakis put it in his book American Independent Cinema

For the majority of people with basic knowledge of American cinema, independent
filmmaking consists of low-budget projects made by (mostly) young filmmakers with a
strong personal vision away from the influence and pressures of the few major conglomerates
that control tightly the American film industry.
67


The above mentioned film was directed by the director of Old Joy (2006), a film
which tells the story of two friends who reunite for a camping trip in Oregon's Cascade
Mountains. Kelly Reiharts film respects the above mentioned characteristics of this kind of
films: it had a low budget, and, although she is not a very young filmmaker, Kelly is a
woman in an industry dominated by men. She edited the film in her own apartment, and
sometimes went filming with the crew of three, the leading actress included - such was the
case with the train tracks and the trains in the credit scene. At a Q&A for the 2008 New York
Film Festival, the director confessed that Realism and, particularly the German Realism,
contextualized and seemed relevant for the life in America that she wanted to present in

67
Yannis Tzioumakis American Independent Cinema An Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,
2006, p. 1.
37
Wendy and Lucy. The way it was filmed makes the film, and the story, in turn, look very
realistic; there are no special sound effects; everything is natural, if one may say so. Just as in
Into the Wild, the director uses natural light, while the Reinharts films sound effects are
given by the trains wheels rolling own the train tracks, the squeak of the bus wheels, the
distant sound of the cars on the highway, and the most authentic, Wendys humming while
playing with Lu or while looking for the dog. Michelle Williams said, during the same
Q&A at the 2008 New York Film Festival, that humming seemed natural for somebody who
is alone and unobserved.
Joel Bocko wrote the following in the film blog Wonders in the Dark

Meanwhile, quietly but with growing acclaim and less controversy, a number of
independent films appeared at festivals with an opposite tack: rather than explore the
emotional travails of the financially secure but spiritually wandering young, it sought out
subjects on the periphery of society: struggling immigrants, street orphans, crack addicts in
the flooded hinterlands. Stylistically there was a similarity, in that these indies
68
were usually
shot low to the ground, but it should be noted that (ironically) the films with more
impoverished subjects sometimes had bigger budgets, more access to professionals even
movie stars, and more established backers (Wendy and Lucy was produced by Todd
Haynes
69
).

Reichardts Wendy and Lucy brings tribute to the independent film, which is outside
the mainstream, since it had a small crew and cast, short dialogues; the focus is on the
character which comes from the periphery of society. In the first part of the film the viewer
can hardly understand what she is doing, where she is going, why she is so quiet, but after
Lucy disappears, Wendy opens up and we sense her affection for the dog and Wendys
pursuit becomes the main plot of the film.
The expression periphery of society brings to our mind Giles Deleuze and Flix
Guattaris Kafta pour une literature mineure (1975). In Warren Bucklands edited Film
Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies, in its tenth chapter, entitled Demystifying
Deleuze: French Philosophy Meets Contemporary U.S. Cinema, David Martin Jones made a
description of Deleuze and Guattaris book in which he said that the two French theoreticians
outline a concept, as the title suggests it, called minor literature, which is a literature that uses
a dominant language but this language was (mis)used in such a way that it began to speak in

68
The term indies refers to the independent films.
69
Todd Haynes is the director of Im not there (2007) and Velvet Goldmine (1998).
38
a different voice, to stutter, stammer or wail. Kafka was given as example because he was a
Czechoslovakian Jew who lived in Prague during the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
For Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka was the one who took the dominant imperial language,
which was the German, and, in his uncommon but excellent literature, pronounced it in a
very minor way. The following passage is even more relevant for the analysis of independent
films, in general, and for the analysis of Wendy and Lucy and Into the Wild in particular:

A minor language, then, is not necessarily minor in the sense of minority. Rather, it
should be understood as a minor in a musical sense. A minor work takes a dominant
language, and plays it in a minor key, making it sound altogether different, and potentially
challenging its established and accepted meanings.
70


It is exactly what films like the above mentioned do: besides being part of a minor
category that of independent films they took the dominant language, that of filming, but
played it in a minor key: as we said before, a small crew, a small cast, minimal sound effects
and the character who comes from the periphery of society, or wants to quit it, as Chris did,
and made a film which was different than those of mainstream challenging its established
meanings. Nowadays such films are regarded as having their own canon, appealing to more
and more spectators, given the fact that, if Wendy and Lucy did not, Into the Wild sure
appealed to a wide audience. In addition, more and more film companies emerge, promote
and support independent films, such as Miramax and Sony Picture Classics, but as Yannis
Tzioumakis put it film critics and industry analysts had been reluctant to attach the label
independent to them, especially to Miramax
71
.
Wendy and Lucy remains an independent film [] that has not been produced and/
or distributed by a major entertainment conglomerate (Sony Columbia, Viacom Paramount,
AOL Time Warner, MGM/UA, ABC Disney, NBC Universal, News Corp. Fox and
Dreamworks SKG)
72
which shares many themes with Sean Penns 2007 film. Besides that
of the wandering protagonist who leaves his or her home and later becomes homeless, the
two films begin, coincidence or not, with images of freight trains: in Wendy and Lucy we see
them in the credit scene, and in Into the Wild we see it in the prior sequence to the credit
scene. Wendy and Alex both hop on a freight train that can take them, to the same
destination: Alaska. Only Alex is caught and beaten up by the railway guard, while we dont

70
[my italics].
71
Yannis Tzioumakis, American Independent Film An Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,
2006, p. 3.
72
Idem, p. 2.
39
know if Wendy makes it to Alaska. The two characters use this mean of transportation after,
another coincidence; both have their cars damaged, either by a flashflood, in Alexs case,
either because of serious and expensive to fix mechanical problems.
One last thing that Alex and Wendy have in common is that they both try to
accommodate themselves in the wild, in the outdoors. After taking a few clothes, a blanket, a
pillow, and, what seems to be, a music box out of her cars trunk, Wendy starts looking for
Lucy in the outskirts of a small town from Oregon. She leaves her clothes on the branches of
trees, in a nearby forest; maybe Lu will catch their smell and come back to her. For the
night, Wendy manages to find some useful cardboard to make herself a bed on a small hill
near the railway tracks, while in Sean Penns film, Alex is arranging the bus surroundings so
as to suit his necessities making himself an offhand shower.
Wendy is the only female character which takes part in a similar journey of Chris
from the cluster of films discussed by this thesis, this, of course, does not mean that she is the
only one. The are many examples of female characters which take their lives in their hands,
go out on a journey and make significant changes, one of the examples comes from classic
literature, namely Daniel Defoes Moll Flanders, whom has very different manners as
opposed to Wendy, but whom, in turn, is part of a life changing journey and seems to be a
women of action. On the other hand, there is the story of two popular characters that the
seventh art brought to light: Thelma and Louise (1991, dir. Ridley Scott). We see again, a
road movie who presents the story of Thelma Dickinson and Louise Sawyer, played by Gina
Davis and Susan Sarandon. Thelma is a passive housewife married to a controlling man, and
Louise, a single, but strong and funny waitress carrying with her an unspecified trauma from
her past. The two make the perfect and atypical couple for a great adventure story; the ladies
part on a two days vacation in the mountains with Louises car but their journey becomes a
nightmare before they reach their destination. Perhaps, it can be easily said that the road
belongs to men, but there are many examples that women are no exception, and that they, in
turn, can hit the road; each one shapes it and manages to survive it in its own way.
Besides the common idea on which the above mentioned films are mapped on, some
of them relate to each other by the same themes, beside that of a journey, which they tackle.
Just as Into the Wild, Wild America and Wendy and Lucy present the journey of either a
young woman: Wendy and her companion, Lucy, a dog, heading towards Alaska, or that of
three brothers, Marty, Mark, and Marshall Stouffer leaving their hometown aiming to reach
Alaska.
40
On the other hand, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
(2007) and Days of Heaven (1978) are films which not only present outlaws wandering
across the country, but also depict the beautiful American landscape. Their actions unfold in
almost the same period of time: the assassination of Jesse James took place at the end of the
19
th
century, while the action of Days of Heaven is placed at the beginning of the 20
th

century, a time in which the Americans still rambled across the country, either to find a piece
of land to settle on, either to find a job and earn money. The times of the previously
mentioned films are different from those of Into the Wild, Wendy and Lucy and Wild
America, yet, all the characters find themselves wandering across the country.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and Days of
Heaven (1978) represent the interest of the following paragraphs, and we will begin with
Terrence Malicks second feature film, Days of Heaven this, also because Andrew Dominiks
The Assassination was inspired by Malicks film and secondly, because of chronological
reasons.
Days of Heaven tells the story of two siblings, Bill, played by Richard Gere, and
Linda, played by Linda Manz, and Bills sweetheart, Abby, played by Brooke Adams. The
last two told everybody they were brother and sister, because Bill didnt wanted anybody
to know too much about him. Just as in Into the Wild and Wild America, in this film we also
hear the voice of a narrator, again in the character of the youngest sibling, in Malicks film,
Linda, who witnesses the entire experience of the older brother, in this case Bill. The three of
them travel to the Texas Panhandle, as Linda narrates []in fact, all three of us have been
goin places. Looking for things, searching for things, goin on adventures. So again, we
encounter the theme of adventure as one of the characters confesses. To get to their
destination, the adventurers use the most popular means of transportation of the time, the
train, to get them at the place where they were to harvest crops for a wealthy dying farmer,
played by Sam Shepard. Hearing about the poor health condition of the farmer, Bill
encourages her sister to seduce him, eventually marry him, and, after his death, inherit his
fortune. But things dont go according to the plan; Abby marries the farmer but falls in love
with him, and the two spend days of heaven together: dancing, eating, and walking on the
sunny fields, a place where time seems to have mercy on people. But the newly wedded
husband looks with strange eyes at her wifes brother and the relationship the two have:
they seem too close for a brother and a sister, however, the farmer tries to establish a cordial
relationship with his brother in law asking him to join hunting birds for diner, but Bill seems
distant during the hunt, and sometimes, it acts as if he tries to shoot the farmer, not the birds.
41
Bill leaves the farm, while the farmer begins to take care of the new harvest season.
When Bill returns, a locust swarm and a fire destroy his wheat fields. The farmer discovers
Bills true relationship with his wife and seems to blame him for the locust invasion and all
the atrocities that followed. The farmer goes after him with a gun, but just as he did at the
beginning of the film with one of the factorys superior, Bill kills him in self defense. He is
now considered an outlaw and together with Abby and Linda, the three of them hide in the
woods and on a river, while the foreman and the police pursue and eventually find them; the
police kill Bill. Abby leaves Linda at a boarding school and goes off on her own. But Linda
escapes, and we see her at the end of the film walking on the train tracks with a new friend,
who seemed like a nice girl.
Besides the theme of adventure, of the journey, the forest is also an element which
appears in this film as well as in the previous three. This time, either, the newly wed runaway
and spend what was supposed to be a honeymoon, walking in the woods where they celebrate
their freedom and their new condition, away from the judgmental peoples eyesight, either
Bill, by then an outlaw, together with Abby and Linda, hide in the forest confirming that the
forest is associated with 2. Hiding and that it is4. The home of the outlaws.
73

On the other hand, Days of Heaven brings to our mind the importance of another
key element in these films: the importance of the land and of mans relationship with it; in
this film this being more visible then in the previous ones. We witness the farmers ambition
to produce as much as possible and to make a profit out of what the land offers. It seems the
land rewards the field workers hard work, especially Abby and Bills who are symbolically
rewarded with the farmers home and food. The farmer, in his turn, is rewarded for his hard
work with Abbys unexpected affection, but Bill and Abbys mischievous plan is punished,
and that punishment comes from the land with the locusts invasion which reminds us of
the biblical Plague of Locust from Exodus 10:36.

This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to
humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to
let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the
ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail,
including every tree that is growing in your fields. They will fill your houses and those of all

73
Ad, de Vries, Elseviers Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. Second Enlarged Edition by Ad de Vries,
Revised and Updated by Arthur De Vries, Oirschot, The Netherlands, 2004.p. 240.
42
your officials and all the Egyptianssomething neither your fathers nor your forefathers
have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.
74


According to Cahiers du Cinmas, January, 2008s edition, when Sean Penn met
with the French director of photography ric Gauthier, the two discussed about their favorite
director and film, about people who influenced and inspired them; amongst those was
Terrence Malick, and his 1978 film represented an inspiration both for Penn and Gautier.
That is also because the two films and Wendy and Lucy as well use natural light and their
actions unfold outdoors. Days of Heavens beauty of colors and imagery are due to its
director of photography Nestor Almendros, who won an Academy Award for Best
Cinematography in 1979 for his work in Terence Malicks film. In his 1998 article for Movie
Maker The Art and Business of Making Films, Rustin Thompson wrote He was an artist of
deep integrity, who believed the most beautiful light was natural light. [] But there is
something more-he was always true to a light's source, true to the emotion evoked by the cast
and color of light as it changed through the day. Thompson also quotes the cinematographer
from his biographical book entitled A Man with a Camera: "Nature's most beautiful light,"
Almendros wrote, "occurs at extreme moments, the very moments when filming seems
impossible. And Days of Heaven was filmed in those moments. The crew managed to film
25 minutes while those extreme moments occurred. And those moments inspired many
films that followed; such is the case with Into the Wild.
Rustin Thompson ended his article Myth-making With Natural Light, published in
The Movie Maker The Art and Business of Making Movies, June 30, 1998, with the
following lines He will always be remembered as a cinematographer of absolute truth. He
discovered beauty in the sepulchral darkness of the human face, and disquiet in the still life
of a landscape.
It is self-evident that the films presented so far, honor nature and its constituent, the
land, by placing their action in the natural background, by the means in which the two
elements are presented in each image and scene, and by the attention devoted to constituent
parts of nature. Henry David Thoreau echoes through the scenes and characters, if maybe his
philosophical current does not, but it is as if the words he put down in Walden perfectly
describe the aesthetics of Days of Heaven, Wendy and Lucy, Into the Wild, and sometimes,
Wild America.

74
http://biblebrowser.com/exodus/10-3.htm, last consulted on May 14
th
2012, at 12: 24 PM.

43
Talking about echoes, the aesthetics of Days of Heaven echoes in Andrew Dominiks
2007 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford through the many scenes
in which the protagonists are presented on the quiet windy fields; the golden color of the
wheat fields mingles with that of the sky and the main character is placed in the middle of it;
in the case of Jesse James, his figure contrasting with the warm colors. The film is visually
stunning and historically faithful, yet critics say Too often, the monotonous voiceover
recounts events which sound a lot more interesting than anything happening onscreen, while
the audience is left watching endless shots of snowy fields.
75
Alex von Tunzelmann, in his
article for The Guardian, compared the character of Jesse James, played by Brad Pitt, with
Hamlet, because of the big, black wolf skin coats.
The film presents the story of Jesse James and his gang, but also focuses on the
character of Robert Ford, remarkably played by Casey Affleck, as part of Jesses gang. We
also see the Academy Award nominee for Best Actor in a leading role, Jeremy Renner as one
of the gang members, but also Sam Shepard, who played the farmer in Malicks film
Just as Into the Wild, Wild America, and Days of
Heaven, this film has a narrator who is describing the
characters wandering on the land, or, while Jesse James is
wandering gloomily on to frozen ponds to contemplate
existential questions, just as Chris McCandless did. But the
narrator is not part of the story; he has the role of guiding the
audience.
Robert Ford seems to be obsessed with Jesses
figure, he seems to worship him, collecting magazine articles
with his great robberies, asking if he is not to late to wish
Fig. 5
76
him happy birthday; Robert Ford seems to fit in the gang, hen also seems to be
always in his shade if not trying to be him, but manages to gain Jesses trust. Robert, together
with his brother Charlie Ford, played by Sam Rockwell, is invited at the outlaws house. At
diner, Robert outlines the similarities between them:

Well, if you'll pardon my saying so, I guess it is interesting, the many ways you and I
overlap and whatnot. You begin with our Daddies. Your daddy was a pastor of the New Hope

75
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/08/the-assassination-of-jesse-james-brad-pitt last consulted on May 8
th
,
2012, 9:13 PM.
76
The Assassination of Jesse James by The coward Robert Ford- film poster,
source:http://www.impawards.com/2007/assassination_of_jesse_james_by_the_coward_robert_ford.html, last
consulted on June 25
th
, 2012, at 12:56 PM.
44
Baptist Church; my daddy was a pastor of a church at Excelsior Springs. Um. You're the
youngest of the three James boys; I'm the youngest of the five Ford boys. Between Charley
and me, is another brother, Wilbur here, with six letters in his name; between Frank and you
was a brother, Robert, also with six letters. Robert is my Christian name. You have blue eyes;
I have blue eyes. You're five feet eight inches tall. I'm five feet eight inches tall. Oh me, I
must've had a list as long as your nightshirt when I was twelve, but I've lost some curiosities
over the years.
Jesse James: [stares at Bob for a long time, smiles] Ain't he something?
77


Sometimes it seems that Robert Ford is aware that he is hiding in Jesses shadow,
other times it is as if he wished he were him. This idea is also suggested by the films poster,
which presents the characters whose names can be found in the title. Jesse James stands
imposing, on the foreground, while Robert Ford, acting as his shade, is depicted behind him,
suggesting his betrayal, the danger behind Jesse. He also fears that Jesse might kill him just
as he did with the other members of the gang who betrayed him. But Robert himself betrayed
Jesse, tragically assassinating him, shooting him in his head, from the back, like a coward
does, without even looking him in the eye.
After the murder, Robert becomes famous and, together with his brother, reenacts on
stages across the country the moment of the murder. Eventually, he dies lonely and
misunderstood, shot in a bar. Instead of becoming the good boy who wanted to be recognized
by those whose husbands were slaughtered by Jesse James, he became the bad guy who
assassinated the hero of a nation, the Robin Hood if the American west.
Manohla Dargis wrote in her movie review for the New York Times, Good, Bad or
Ugly: A Legend Shrouded in Gun smoke Remains Hazy, published in September 21, 2007 the
following:

Its a striking, pleasing image, whatever the case, pretty as a picture postcard, a vision of
man and nature that brings to mind Thoreau at Walden Pond or more precisely Terrence
Malicks Days of Heaven. James is also facing West, of course, toward the last frontier,
home to cowboys and Indians and prospectors of all types, including, soon enough, those who
will wield movie cameras, not six-shooters
78
.


77
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443680/quotes, last consulted on May 14
th
, 2012, at 9:43 PM.
78
http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/movies/21assa.html?pagewanted=all, last consulted on May 14
th
, 2012, at
10:20 PM.
45
This excerpt supports and confirms the general features of the above discussed films
regarding their pleasing, natural images, related to the theme of mans and the wandering
heros relationship with the land. The influences of Henry David Thoreaus Walden echo on
screen especially in Terrence Mallicks Days of Heaven, which, later on influenced many
film makers. In each discussed film there is a little bit of Thoreau and a little bit of Mallick
and each bit is unified with an individual story.
Days of Heaven and The Assassinationare pretty as a picture postcard perhaps,
because, in modeling the films cinematography, Mallick was inspired by silent films and the
paintings of Johannes Vermeer and Andrew Wyeth, while Andrew Dominik was inspired by
Mallicks work.
Another common feature of Wendy and Lucy, Into the Wild, Days of Heaven and The
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the depiction of trains and train
tracks. The protagonists use the (freight) train to get to their destination, walk by the train
tracks as if they dont know where they are heading, they just go; they camp near the
railroad, or such is the case with Jesse James and his gang, they try to control the trains and
the railroad by their train robberies. If in Days of Heaven and The Assassination, it was the
popular means of transportation of the times, in the case of Into the Wild and Wendy and
Lucy, the freight train is the popular and cheap means of transportation of the hobos and the
wanderers who travel without paying.
If W&L surprises with its natural, realistic, and authentic sound effects, The
Assassination catches the viewers hearing due to its sound effects. Beside the traditional
score of a film, which, with Dominiks film is not exactly the case of a traditional one, but
rather a proclaimed, very well accepted by the critics claustrophobic, intense[]
soundscape
79
composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, the score is completed by the
natural sound effects of the wind, the sound of insects or the sound of Jesses boots stepping
on the frozen river; sometimes we can perceive even the sound of Roberts coat rubbing the
shirt while dressing. When the characters are on the plain fields or in the forests, to render the
emptiness of the respective place and the loneliness of the characters, the natural sound of the
respective environment can be heard; it is either the sound of the wind and of the wheat and
grass blown by it, either the shivering of leaves and limbs which can be heard. These aspects
remind us of the sound of wind and locusts in Days of Heaven, where again the natural
sound effects are exploited

79
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/hn9x, last consulted on June 14
th
, 2012, at 7:11 PM.
46
More over, three of them are based on true stories. By now, we know that Into the
Wild is based on the real life story; Wild America is also based on the biographical story of
Marty Stoufers first attempt to film Americas wild animals together with his two brothers
Mark and Marshall, while The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and
Wendy and Lucy are based on fictional books. On one hand, The Assassination is based on
Ron Hansens 1983 novel of the same name, although the story is built on the legendary
figure of the famous American outlaw Jesse James. On the other hand, Wendy and Lucy was
adapted by the films director, Kelly Reichardt, and Jon Raymond from the last ones short
story Train Choir. Days of Heaven is the only film out of these five which is not based
either on a true story, either on a published text; it was written and directed by Terrence
Malick.

3.1. Screenshots of Wandering Heroes

Before reaching the conclusion, I would like to talk about the screenshots found in the
Annex which are relevant and come as a completion for the third chapter of the thesis. The
screenshots are meant to make visible the similarities between the discussed films;
similarities between the development of the story, the path of each journey, the sights
discovered by the heroes, the means of transport used by the protagonists, the way they
accommodate themselves with the new environment and how they develop the relationships
with the ones they meet on the road.
Screenshot number 1 and number 2 come as an unexpected surprise, it was very
unlikely to capture them, but here they are. In the first one, from Mallicks film, the horses
are filmed during that particular moment of Almendros was talking about, while the second
screenshot captures Chris embracing his freedom and trying to connect and share that
feeling with the non-human, but, perhaps less offensive, with horses, animals.
The following ten screenshots
80
are an alternation between the ones captured from
Into the Wild and Wendy and Lucy. Both of these films focus on one protagonist, who started
the journey by himself, without a brother or a sister to keep him or her companionship.
Screenshot No. 3 and No. 4 depict their hygiene habits; Chris and Wendy are brushing their
teeth in what seems to be a gas stations bathroom. The following two images present the
wanderers carrying their back packs, while screenshot seven and eight focus on the two
tramps feet; their tired feet, the only ones they can rely on to reach Alaska. The next two

80
Screenshots 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
47
screenshots (No. 9 and No. 10) show the protagonists trying to reconnect with their relatives.
On one hand, there is Wendy who uses the pay phone to reach her sister and ask for her help
but she is refused, and on the other hand, there is Chris, who is considering to reach his
folks who are back home, worrying for him, but suddenly changes his mind and offers his
last coin to a man next to him. This shows his refusal to let his parents know about his
whereabouts. Screenshots number eleven and number twelve depict the heroes heading with
their heavy blue backpacks towards Alaska.
The following two screenshots (No.13&14) present the popular means of
transportation in a cross country adventure: the car (on the road). The Stoufer brothers, as
well as Chris, use their old cars aiming to reach Alaska, and in both cases the cars suffer
damages; in Chris case the car is damaged by the flashflood and it is abandoned, while the
Stoufers car is robbed.
The screenshots from 15 to 18 still concentrate on similitudes between Wild America
and Into the Wild. Screenshot No.15 and No.16 present the Alaskan adventurers climbing a
snowy hill before facing important spots on which crucial events will take place; for Marty,
Mark and Marshall it is the bear cage, and for Alexander Supertramp, it is the plateau with
the 142 bus. The following two images present Marty and Alex reading, activity which
influenced both of the two boys adventure; it was reading that fuelled their lust for
adventure. Both characters continued to read while on the road.
Bringing to our mind Huckleberry Finns adventures on Mississippi River, the next
two screenshots present another popular means of transportation of the wandering heroes: the
boat. We see Bill, Abby and Linda hiding and running away on a boat, after Bill murdered
the farmer, while Chris is paddling down the Colorado River, himself hiding from society.
The following two screenshots are almost impossible to be taken from Into the Wild,
since, contrary to Chris example, both Wendy and the Stoufers used a map to get to Alaska,
and these two screenshots present the protagonists trying to figure out the map.
The screenshots from 23 to 28 aim to present the protagonists of all five discussed
films while in the woods, in the forest, with Chris leaving the woods behind him, Wendy,
penetrating the woods, while Marty climbing out of the woods reaching a plain; than, there
is, what I would like to call, the Mallick framing of the character amidst the white covering
of the tree trunks; and thus we see Bill, hiding in the woods, then Andrew Dominiks
presenting Robert Ford trying to interact with Jesses gang, and we get back to a screenshot
from Days of Heaven, and we see Abby walking with her husband in the shadow of the
forest.
48
The next three screenshots are dedicated to brotherhood, and sisterhood respectively;
in the 29
th
screenshot we see Marty talking to his youngest brother about his dreams of
filming the American Wild near the water, while in the 30
th
screenshot we see the two sisters,
Abby and Linda, again by the water, and the older one taking care of the younger one. This
time in the wheat blown by the wind, we see the Ford brothers in the 31
st
screenshot, again
the older brother taking care of the younger.
Starting from this 31
st
screenshot onwards, the following try to present the same
natural motifs depicted in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,
Days of Heaven and Into the Wild,
The following screenshots are all related to trains and train tracks, either presenting
the characters walking between the train tracks, either walking near the rolling trains as Jesse
can be seen in screenshot No.41, trying to jump in with her belongings in her hand, as Wendy
does it, or jumping of the freight train with his belongings in his hand, as Alex can be seen in
screenshot No. 43. It seems like the train has always attracted the wanderers, given the fact
that they can be seen as running or hiding between the wagons as the following screenshots
capture it. The last two screenshots presents the train rolling on a bridge; one of the images is
from Into the wild, and the one which closes this succession of screenshots, I find it relevant
because the train carrying traveling people to their destination, it symbolizes the destiny
carrying humans through life.
Closing this chapter dedicated to the comparative analysis of these five beautifully
crafted films, it seems to me that nature and natural elements easily find their place in an art
form that aims to imitate reality. All these films can be easily regarded as a postcard of and
from America signed either by its wandering sons and daughters of America herself or from
America to her lost, wandering heroes.












49

4. Conclusion

Because of its vast territory, America has always been the home of the wandering
people, and sometimes of the lost and those searching for themselves, or a place they can
identify with. The main character of the book which constitutes the fundament of this thesis
is no exception, and the film based upon it comes as a visual and aesthetic manifestation of
this physical and symbolic voyage.
As we seen it in the first chapter of the thesis, Alexander Supertramp was a follower
of Transcendentalism, a Transcendentalism which, in America [] placed special value on
conscience, imagination, and personal autonomy
81
; all the characters mentioned in the thesis
had a personal autonomy starting with Chris McCandless, even Henry David Thoreau can be
mentioned here since he was one of the initiators of the movement, and continuing with
Marty Stoufer, Wendy, Bill, and Jesse James, as for Robert Ford, he seemed to be very much
influenced by Jesses personal autonomy, his own was rather fake, but nevertheless he tried
to gain his personal autonomy, but failed. For Robert, I believe it was more significant the
journey and the adventure that he partook. One thing is for sure, for all these characters the
West is always the best.
Chris ideal conduct was dominated by sincerity and truth, he was living for the
now , for the present, and he was, as Walt Whitman would say, celebrating himself, but
above all celebrating his encounter with nature, and, again, himself. His individualism can be
blamed, but only ones own self can help the self adjust to the world.
Just as the Beats strive for authenticity which was an inner need for adventure and
for shaping that life changing adventure into text, Alexander Supertramps need for
adventure, but also his search for truth, consequently, for authenticity, burst into this story,
that we all know through Jon Krakauers book, from somewhere deep inside.
A line from Tzioumakis suggests that in the American cinema of the 1960s []
there was space for a cinema about people
82
The changes of the 60s found their effects in
todays American cinema, of which Sean Penn, both as an actor and as a director, is a
representative. Penn is renowned as a rebel and an activist, and as himself confessed in an
interview for Sundance Festivals Iconoclasts that he was impressed by Chris story also
because it reminded him of himself. Coming back to the quote, Sean Penns Into the Wild is
indeed a film about people, and so are the rest of the four films mentioned in this thesis.

81
William E. Cain, A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau, p. 18.
82
Yannis Tzioumakis, p.184.
50
Yannis Tzioumakis in his American Independent Film An Introduction mentions the
following:
Besides the status as independent productions, the above group of films shared a large
number of other characteristics the most important of which were their conscious targeting
of a young audience and their emphasis on questioning established traditions, both in terms
of the types of stories they presented and the manner in which the presentation of the
stories occurred on screen. These films set new trends in their treatment of controversial
material such as the representation of violence (Bonnie and Clyde); sex (Midnight Cowboy
and The Graduate); and drugs (Easy Ryder) and struck the final blow to the already
weakened Production Code, which was replaced in 1968 with the Ratings classification
system.
83


This excerpt is relevant for the conclusion of this thesis because it discusses a topic which
Sean Penns 2007 film tackles: through his attitude Chris questions established traditions, and
Penns film, as well as Kelly Reinharts W&L, and Terrence Mallicks Days of Heaven (and it
wouldnt be a great mistake to mention here his 1973 Badlands) question types of stories they
present and manner in which the presentation of the stories occurred on screen. Most of the
films discussed in this thesis have not such controversial stories as violence (with the exception
of The Assassination of Jesse James and Days of Heaven, the later implying less violence than
the former, but still this had to be mentioned), sex or drugs, still as afore said they discuss and
present other controversial issues such as the refusal of social conventions and the acceptance of
the different, of the other different than ourselves, supporting the developing of ones
individuality.
We have also discussed an officially independent film, and I would like to apply a line
which officially describes the independent films to the stories, types of characters and manner of
filming They were perceived as representative of the counterculture, an alternative culture
developed around the differences in attitudes, mores and style between the American youth and
the older generations who continued to represent the official culture, the establishment.
84
It
seems to me that Into the Wild the film and book Wild America, Wendy and Lucy, Days of
Heaven, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford as unities but as
means of bringing to light types of characters, are representatives of counter culture.
I would like to end with the following: as the title of very often quoted Saad Chakalis
article suggests Une nouvelle Amrique encore inapprochable, I believe America is

83
Yannis Tzioumakis, p.178,[my italics].
84
Idem, p.179.
51
approachable, and, as this thesis suggests, it is approachable through a journey, a journey
similar to that of Chris McCandless, the Stoufer brothers, Wendys or Jesse James and
Robert Fords, and not only America would be approachable, but the self too, either if it is
our self or their self, although these characters seemed inapproachable.






































52

Works cited

1. Buckland, Warren, Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies, Routledge,
New York, 2009.
2. Cain, William E., A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau, Oxford University
Press, 2000.
3. Crciun, Camelia, The Picaresque Novel A Short Survey on the 18
th
Century
English Novel: a course for the IInd year students, Editura Universiii
Transilvania, Braov, 2002.
4. Donadieu, Marc V., American Picaresque: The Early Novels of T. Coraghessan
Boyle (A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of
Louisiana at Lafayette In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree),
2000.
5. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, the Riverside Edition,
George Routledge and Sons, London, 1973.
6. Goga,Yvonne, Tendences du roman franais au XXe sicle , Euro Tami Press, Cluj-
Napoca, 1998.
7. Holladay, Hilary, Holton, Robert, Whats Your Road, Man? - Critical Essays on Jack
Kerouaks On the Road, Southern Illinois University Press/Carbondale, 2009.
8. Kauffman, Stanley, Regarding Film - Criticism and Comment, the John Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore, 2001.
9. Krakauer, Jon, Into the Wild, Anchor Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., New
York, 1997.
10. Lewis
,
Richard W.B., Recent Fiction: Picaro and Pilgrim, from The voice of
America, Forum Lectures, Modern American Literature, Forum Editor, United States
Information Agency, Washington D.C., 1973.
11. McLoughlin, Michael, Dead Letters to the New World - Melville, Emerson, and
American Transcendentalism, Routledge, New York, 2003.
12. Strauss, Frdric, Huet, Anna, Cum se fac filmele, Editura Humanitas, Bucureti,
2008.
13. Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, Collectors Library, London, 2004.
14. Tzioumakis, Yannis, American Independent Film An Introduction, Edinburgh
University Press, Edinburgh, 2006.
53
15. de Vries, Ad, Elseviers Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. Second Enlarged
Edition by Ad de Vries, Revised and Updated by Arthur De Vries, Oirschot, The
Netherlands, 2004.

Magazine Articles:
1. Chakali, Saad. 2008. Une nouvelle Amrique encore inapprochable, Into the Wild,
Sean Penn, 2007 . Vertigo. N. 35.
2. Frodon, Jean-Michel, 2008. Into the Wild de Sean Penn, Pas de pays pour les
hommes jeunes, Cahiers de Cinma/ January.
3. Golhen, Gal. 2008. En pleine lumire, Premiere. N.378- Summer.
4. Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher, Taking Risk to its Logical Extreme. New York Times.
January 4, 1996, Late Edition.

Films
1. Dear, William, Wild America. 1997, Warner Bros. Pictures and Morgan Creek.
2. Dominik, Andrew, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford.2007, Warner Bros. Pictures and Visual Studios.
3. Mallick, Terrence, Days of Heven, 1978,
4. Penn, Sean. Into the Wild. 2007, River Road Entertainment, LLC and Paramount
Vantage.
5. Reinhart, Kelly, Wendy and Lucy. 2008, Osciloscope Laboratories.

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14:56 PM.
19. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCQ-IWdAFp0, last consulted on May 17
th
2012,
at 15:13 PM.
20. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNOMrgUz4As, last consulted on May 17
th

2012, at 19:18 PM.
21. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waWGnTbVIEE, last consulted on May 14
th,
2012, at 16:42 PM.
22. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9tjqblawHA, last consulted on May 14
th,
2012, at
18.20PM.


55
Annex

Cvasisimilitudes

1. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)

2. Screenshot from Into the Wild ( dir. Sean Penn, 2007)



56

3. Screenshot from Into the Wild ( dir. Sean Penn, 2007)

4. Screenshot from Wendy and Lucy ( dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)


5. Screenshot from Into the Wild ( dir. Sean Penn, 2007)


57

6. Image from Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008), source:
http://www.filmgazing.com/wendyandlucy.html last consulted: 19
th
of June, 2012, 23:45PM.

7. Screenshot from Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)

8. Screenshot from Into the Wild ( dir. Sean Penn, 2007)

58


9. Screenshot from Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)


10. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)


11. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)

59

12. Screenshot from Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)

13. Screenshot from Wild America (dir. William Dear , 1997)



14. Screenshot from Into the Wild ( dir. Sean Penn, 2007)
60

15. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)

16. Screenshot from Wild America ( dir. William Dear, 1997)

17. Screenshot from Wild America ( dir. William Dear, 1997)
61

18. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)

19. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)


20. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)



62

21. Screenshot from Wild America ( dir. William Dear, 1997)

22. Screenshot from Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)

23. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)
63

24. Screenshot from Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)

25. Screenshot from Wild America ( dir. William Dear, 1997)

26. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)
64

27. Screenshot from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir.
Andrew Dominik, 2007)

28. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)

29. Screenshot from Wild America (dir. William Dear, 1997)
65

30. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)


31. Screenshot from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik, 2007)

32. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)
66

33. Idem.

34. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)


35. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)
67

36. Screenshot from Wild America ( dir. William Dear, 1997)

37. Screenshot from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik, 2007)

38. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)
68

39. Screenshot from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford(dir. Andrew Dominik, 2007)

40. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)


41. Screenshot from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik, 2007)
69

42. Screenshot from Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)

43. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)

44. Idem.
70

45. Screenshot from Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)

46. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)

47. Screenshot from Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn, 2007)
71

48. Screenshot from Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Mallick, 1978)