{"id":67,"date":"2006-04-19T10:40:23","date_gmt":"2006-04-19T15:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/04\/19\/my-astin-martin-drives-through-the-vegetable-garden-in-the-gulch-with-a-hitchhiker\/"},"modified":"2008-02-13T20:59:16","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T01:59:16","slug":"my-astin-martin-drives-through-the-vegetable-garden-in-the-gulch-with-a-hitchhiker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/04\/19\/my-astin-martin-drives-through-the-vegetable-garden-in-the-gulch-with-a-hitchhiker\/","title":{"rendered":"My Astin Martin Drives Through the Vegetable Garden in the Gulch with a Hitchhiker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caption 1 <\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/flisspix\/15849911\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Originally posted by: mygothlaundry<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc Chris was always an entrepreneur,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Billie says with a laugh. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAlways.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 As an eight-year-old, he grew vegetables behind the house in Annandale and then sold them door-to-door around the neighborhood.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild<\/em>, p. 115).<\/p>\n

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This is a picture of a little vegetable garden in someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s backyard. The caption from McCandless\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 mother paints a picture of how driven McCandless was even when he was a small child. He was very intelligent and driven, but didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily have a lot of common sense, as we the readers find out through out the book.\u00c2\u00a0 I choose this picture to go with the caption because I see an eight-year-old working diligently on this small piece of land, planting seeds and checking everyday to see if anything is growing. I can also see the eight-year-old mind working to make a profit, reminiscent of Calvin from Jim Watterson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comic strip. This picture could be anyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s backyard, with anyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s small child tending to it. \u00c2\u00a0The caption is sentimental, and makes the reader feel remorse towards McCandless\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 death. You can see the cute little face with the basket of vegetables, instead of the gruesome, emaciated, furry man found at the beginning of Krakauer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book. \u00c2\u00a0Many people would prefer to see the picture of the little boy as opposed to the dead young man.<\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Caption 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sillykitty\/23465997\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Originally posted by: sillykitty<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153..and I could tell by the language he used he was a real sharp fella. He wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d call a typical hitchhiker.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild<\/em>, p. 159)<\/p>\n

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This is a picture of Marvin the Martian, holding a handwritten sign. I picked this particular quote because it summed up much of Chris McCandless\/ Alexander Supertramp\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s transportation. After he left his Datsun in the desert, McCandless either walked, canoed, rode a bicycle, or hitchhiked to get to the next place in his journey. I picked this picture because it had a hitchhiker holding a sign. The language used on the sign is English and very simple, the opposite of the complexity and style of \u00c2\u00a0how McCandless talked. The figurine is not based on a real person, but a character from a cartoon. This is similar to how McCandless based his idea of an Alaskan adventure on fiction books. The caption I choose to go with this picture is ironic because it has a little plastic man holding a sign that says happy birthday. The figurine is standing in front of a keyboard and a computer monitor, and no where near the road. The Martian is recognizing other people, and is connected to those people through the internet. His cartoon character travels through space, where McCandless traveled on the Earth. Marvin the Martian is not what you would call a typical hitchhiker.<\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Caption 3 <\/strong><\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/94799348@N00\/127315133\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Originally posted by: slylitteminds<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153For most of it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s short length, Davis Gulch exists as a deep, twisted gas in the slickrock, narrow enough in places to spit across, lined by overhanging sandstone walls that bar access to the canyon floor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild<\/em>, p. 88).<\/p>\n

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This picture is a picture of Fremont Gulch, in Colorado. I choose this picture because it is a picture of a gulch. It is what the gulch that is mentioned in the book looks like in my head. This picture has all the different elements described in the passage I choose. The picture and the caption go together because you can see the gulch, and might describe it the same way that Krakauer does. The landscape is beautiful and\u00c2\u00a0 haunting because there is no human life portrayed, just endless sky and sandy crevaces. \u00c2\u00a0I choose the caption because it is about the place where Everett Ruess disappeared. The desert that Ruess choose is very similar to the Alaskan wildness that McCandless choose because they are both desolate, fairly uninhabited places. Krakauer compares Ruess and McCandless, marking their solo journeys, their disappearance from the social world, and their deaths. The two men were very similar, and had similar experiences while tramping through the desert.<\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0Caption 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/burlapjacket\/22081306\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Originally posted by: burlap jacket<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Over the next three years the Park Service used the Datsun to make undercover drug buys that led to numerous arrests in the crime-plagued national recreation area, including the bust of a high-volume methamphetamine dealer operating out of a trailer park near Bullhead city.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild<\/em>, p.27)<\/p>\n

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This is a picture of an Astin Martin on a corner in New York City, in the SoHo district. I chose this quote because I really like that McCandless\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Datsun got a lot of good use by the park service. I chose an Astin Martin to compare with the quote because it is a car of all cars; James Bond drives them in the movies. They are really expensive, top of the line machines. This particular car isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t abandoned, and is being shown off around town. This car is the opposite of what McCandless would have chosen to drive and own. \u00c2\u00a0The car is not going to be used for drug busts, or for the greater good of society. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a car to have fun in, and let other people see you in. The picture is ironic because the Astin Martin represents the opposite of Chris McCandless\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ideals. McCandless wanted to find the real meaning in life, and I think he would have seen the Astin Martin as a huge affront to finding that meaning, because it represents a lot of wealth and money. McCandless made a lot of effort to get rid of money in the last two years of his life, only getting the bare essentials of what he needed.<\/p>\n

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Synthesis<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Photographs influence the meaning and meanings of their pictures because they give the viewer something solid and defined to compare the words to. The word happy under a picture of someone frowning is ironic, whereas the same word under a picture of someone smiling can be redundant. The caption can also get rid of potential meaning the viewer may see. The caption has the capability of limiting or expanding meaning. Chris\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Datsun was able to help better the world by getting rid of drug users, while the people who drive the Astin Martin might be involved with the white collar version of drug use. To use the very clich\u00c3\u00a9 phrase, a picture is a thousand words. Using a caption under a picture reduces those thousand words into a paragraph or even a single word. The viewer is almost forced to see the picture the way the caption, or the person who decided on that caption, skews it. When Into the Wild<\/em> is taken out of context, anything can happen. Seeing the picture of the vegetable garden, paired with the caption I choose, the reader may think that Into the Wild<\/em> is the biography of Chris McCandless. The picture of the Astin Martin would change the book into a story about how an abandoned car helped to reduce drug problems, almost eliminating McCandless from the story. Into the Wild<\/em> would not be about young men with ideals that led to their demise, or in Krakauer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case- his almost demise, but about going into the wilds of drug circles and the men and women that try to eliminate their existence. Pictures invite the viewer to see what they want to see, and take away what is important to them, where captions make those same readers take away what the photographer intended.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caption 1 http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/flisspix\/15849911\/ Originally posted by: mygothlaundry \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc Chris was always an entrepreneur,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Billie says with a laugh. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAlways.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 As an eight-year-old, he grew vegetables behind the house in Annandale and then sold them door-to-door around the neighborhood.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, p. 115). This is a picture of a little vegetable garden … Continue reading My Astin Martin Drives Through the Vegetable Garden in the Gulch with a Hitchhiker<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}