[ED NOTE: The following is the first in what we hope will be a series of general essays on not-necessarily-Chicago literature.-Gretchen]

Keep Yourself Alive: The Solitary in Survivalist Lit

By: Scott Stealey

The hallmark of the literature of survival is the removal from society. But within this assumption lies a nasty little undercurrent of belief: it is society that keeps you alive. You can eat because society established the Whole Foods or the Jewel on the corner near where you live. You don’t get a cold from being out in the rain because society provided the condo developments or low-rent shingleboard duplexes to cover your head. You don’t even get a little sick, but if you somehow happen to, there’s CVS. Or Walgreens.

When we think of survival stories, we think of the solitary castoff or castaway, like Robinson Crusoe, or we think of the stranded group, like the pubescent savages in Lord of the Flies. However there is another important division to consider when looking at this genre’s “lost” characters: their choice. The survivor’s choice of getting away is not present enough in the literature of survival, for too often our survivors have no say in their removal from society. Catastrophic circumstances drop them out, expelling them via shipwreck, plane crash, natural disaster.

Those survivors in the “stranded group” side of Survivalist Lit still have each other, and so a microcosm results, society in miniature, but a society just the same. These stories shape a smaller (and often by default, satirical) representation of what we already know. The group is still isolated, but the characters themselves don’t face utter isolation; in conflict terms, it’s still man vs. nature, but man vs. man definitely works its way in as well (think Jack vs Locke in Lost…wouldn’t they still be at odds off-island?). All of which is still interesting, but to me, the “stranded group” doesn’t get to the real heart of the escape from society, the gist of Survivalist Lit. I am thinking more about the freedom that results, about one solitary survivor’s conflict, man vs. himself. The one completely alone. When faced with only your free will, how do you live as a society of one? And more importantly, what does isolation do for the hermit? Can the hermit feel truly free and not share that with anyone? Which leads down a slope into the solitary: why must freedom tie itself so closely to being alone? Just what is the literature of survival trying to tell us about facing life alone?

Into The Wild is one of the examples in Survivalist Lit that presents one character who opts out, a definitive solitary man, (allegedly) disenchanted enough with civilization’s foibles that he feels a Thoreau-urge to disappear away from the things of man. Being citizens of society we all know there are going to be contradictions. We all know that sometimes we are told lies by the trustworthy, we all know that the cogs spin backwards sometimes, we all know you cannot be a sane individual alive today and believe that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds. But we don’t opt out. We do our best. Because we want to live. Key word here being “we.” When Chris McCandless goes off to Alaska to be a hermit, he makes a choice that “we” don’t keep him alive. He wants to live without us, but more importantly, he still wants to live. His will to live is that much more enviable because he wants only his choices to keep him alive. Obstinate, sure, unloving, maybe, but enviable: we just don’t know if our creature comforts are really what’s keeping us comfortably living. What if we lost the internet or our mobile service, or both, depending on our carriers? If the Walgreens closed? If the HVAC person never came? So: looking at a list of canonical literary-fiction Survival Lit, let’s divide that “loner” side further into those tales of surviving alone not by choice, like Robinson Crusoe, Hatchet, the first act of The Black Stallion—and those of surviving alone by choice, by the character’s free will, like Walden, Into the Wild, Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, and recently, The Other (Knopf, $24.95) by David Guterson.

Guterson’s novel is a refreshing new entry into this “loner’s choice” slice of Survival Lit simply because it is fictional and not based on actual accounts like its predecessors. The Other is about a young man (John William Barry) wishing to be a hermit and survive in the woods alone and escape his dutiful society self, a trust-fund baby full of guilt who feels too hard and sees the contradictions and decides he “does not want to participate.”

However, Guterson does not tell the story from John William’s personal survivalist account, instead he cleverly narrates from the point of view of the hermit’s best friend, Neil Countryman, effectively giving us something that the nonfiction “loner choice” books don’t offer: a more expansive interpretation of the people who choose to leave “us.” Guterson doesn’t want the hermit to be seen objectively, as Krakauer wanted McCandless—something to point at and wonder about and draw your own conclusions over—he wants to celebrate the discipline and attention present in solitary survival. His narrator Countryman even remarks in the novel, when going over a newspaper report of John William’s self-isolation, that he cannot believe his friend to have ever been “deranged,” as the newspaper (and by extension, most of society) suggests of the hermit’s state of mind.

Reading the novel, John William becomes a sort of incredibly-believable McCandless, a character who is more than the results of his stubborn choices. He shines with developed flaws and relatable experiences that only a novel can provide, filling in those gaps of humanity with meaningful scenes of his will to live through social contact with his best friend. Once a hermit can have friends, his escapism is splintered. He does live, somewhat, because of the people around him. Sean Penn’s film version of Into The Wild also tried to widen these same voids within the myth of McCandless, effectively rendering the film historical fiction more than adaptation. Don’t get me wrong, I think Krakauer was sincerely fascinated with McCandless, and wanted to respect the man, but as an author recounting true events, he could only report on his research and on what McCandless scribbled in a journal. In short, he was never his subject’s friend. He couldn’t listen (like Countryman does) to his hermit wax on about something like Gnostic purity and get closer to his possible motivations. He couldn’t consider his hermit’s choices with the respect that friendship allows. That doesn’t take away from the merit of Krakauer’s book, it just leaves more for someone like Penn or Guterson to work with as they shape a more believable freedom-seeker.

Like Guterson’s story, Penn’s film had the hermit make friends, probably because that hermit likely did so, and like John William, McCandless wasn’t just some negative grouse or Luddite who felt wronged by the contradictions and changes society dished out. These men are complicated enough to care about how to live without others, but also, they know that they can’t get there alone. They have some of Thoreau’s same disenchantment with the way things are heading in the civilized world, but that isn’t what defines their isolation. They leave for freedom, not for spite. They don’t have a death wish, they have a life wish. Through narratives like theirs it is possible to glean that people are actually what keeps us living, and as such, the freedom these men seek is totally interior: they wish for comfort within themselves. They want to be free of distraction, sure, but their solitary nature is more about the ability to be comfortable when faced with only their thoughts. Which is admirable, when you consider the historical context: Guterson’s book and Penn’s film may have come at this time in civilization because of the coinciding boon of social networking.

While social networking might just be a distraction for some of us, a way to peep or to show off, the themes present in Guterson’s novel expose something a little sinister about our tweets and status updates—aren’t they a dissociative way of being connected with society? You’re alone at your computer or mobile device after all. But, you’re also constantly and immediately available to the network and its second-by-second update. Are we half-assing real human connection, or half-assing being a hermit? I submit that Guterson’s novel also works as a commentary on the contemporary inability to be comfortable alone. Having an online and offline brain should call for more attention to ourselves. For all that social networking can provide, can’t it also take away from our ability to just sit still?

Maybe all our lives have certain dissociative aspects to them, but not big problematic ones that send us off into the wilderness. Survivalist Lit often seeks to understand our most base desires, and with The Other, Guterson may have wanted us to appreciate the hard work it takes to be comfortable alone. Because when you get better at being alone, when you can be attentive and not distracted, when you find that feeling McCandless and John William were searching for, maybe then, remarkably, society gets all the more richer and meaningful.