Alex’s Journey

In class we talked about how Alex’s journey looked more like a circle (which seemed pointless-the circle that is) I don’t think it matters what shape his journey was, it was the cause of the journey that matters I believe.  I don’t think that Alex was looking to explore nature or to experience the wild, I think he was looking for a purpose.  He was looking for something like the old man said; what it was, he didn’t know. 

The way to find it (I believe) he thought was through nature, because it is closer to truth than our ‘civilized’ society is. 

He followed his instinct when he left from one place to another which is closer to nature than systematic (learned reasoning) he acquired from society.  Alex was good with animals which I thought was interesting since it also follows a nature guided instinctive pattern of life. 

Although, he seems odd to most of us, I think Alex was more far sighted than most people.  He got sick of society’s mundane expectations.  The cyclical life he was bound to have which inevitably rotated around basic human needs.  Graduate, get a job, make money so he can enjoy the pleasures of life.  Apparently, that did not satisfy him as an answer; he wanted to find the essence of life, the rock bottom reality which is not tampered with opinion, the essence of life—the purpose of life.  Just like Thoreau who in Walden wanted everyone to agree upon a reality.

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin
Be it life or death, we crave only reality.