Into the Wild

I have read "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer, and I often thought of it in relation to this course throughout the semester, so I decided to use it as one of my outside reading pieces. Chris McCandless, the books main character, decided to isolate himself from society and enter the wilderness. In the end he realized that human contact was needed to live, but before he was able to make it back to a populated area, he perished in the wilderness. I always think of McCandless when I think of people entering the wild in order to gain better understanding of themselves or life itself, but thinking of him also reminds me that people cannot live isolated in the wilderness forever. That is where the importance of aspects such as communitas come in because they keep people who have entered the wilderness in contact with other humans. This just further proves the point that Turner makes when he says that communitas is a necessary bond for humans.