Thursday, March 12, 2009
An Absurd and Onerous Duty
I was reading chapter three in Into the Wild and I came across something that totally struck me. It talks about the way Chris McCandless saw his education. He saw it as "an absurd and onerous duty". When I read it, it made me mad, why? I'm not very sure about that, but maybe it is the fact that he worked so hard and in the end he didn't use that education. It just all went down the toilet. Why didn't he just start his journey before he went to college? Why didn't he "wallow" before he started to waste money on an education that he thought was absurd?If he thought it was so absurd then why do he even bother doing it in the first place? He ended up dying because he made a stupid mistake that his education couldn't fix, so why not donate all the money he got at the beginning? I guess that I'm bitter towards his attitude because I think that education is one of the most important things out there in the world. Maybe he had the Poor Little Rich Boy Disease. Just because he has had everything that he ever wanted he wanted to join the blue collar workers. I don't know why this little line in particular stuck with me and made me ask questions. Do you guys remember there was a prompt for a college essay that asked: "If you could sit down and have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and why?" I think I'd choose Chris just to ask him what made him do everything he did and if he could go back and do something differently, would he?
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I think there may be a little of that "poor little rich boy" thing going on with Chris, but I also would like to check back with you during your senior year of college. I think -- maybe -- you will hear the phrase "absurd and onerous" with different ears four or five years from now. He did graduate with honors, so it isn't as if he just decided to NOT participate. When I look at my former students right now during midterms and finals (depending on whether they are quarters or semesters) and what they write in their Facebook status lines, the romance of college is definitely over. They are slogging it out, and a little crabby about it.
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