ENG 101 - Into the Wild: Escape and/or Transcendence

Most Americans pursue “unfiltered experience.” “A yearning for elsewhere, for a life beyond the one we’re leading,” suggests Jonathan Raban, “is universal [but] in the national mythology, it’s the quintessential American experience to arrive in a wild and inhospitable place, bend raw nature to one’s own advantage, and make it home.” The “bending” might not be as important as the getting there, the getting out there as in Outward Bound, out into the woods, on the river, up into the mountains. We are accustomed to seeing such an experience as “sublime,” a romantic vision discovered or re-discovered by romantic philosophers, novelists, filmmakers, and poets, so much so that perhaps going out into nature has become a commodity, a vacation package, complete with tour guides and slick pamphlets. This quest for a kind of transcendence associated with nature has existed since the very beginnings of the American experience and has recently been examined by Florence Williams in The Nature Fix, her exploration of neuroscientists’ grapplings about how we are affected by the natural world. We will read and see films based upon Into the Wild and “Brokeback Mountain” as well as the film, “Grizzly Man,” and such novels as In the Lake of the Woods, Bay of Souls, Point Omega, Jazz, and others. Classes involve discussion, student-led panels for each book and film, and five five-page papers. It will be a sublime experience.

Credits 1