Pavlovsky 1 Edgar Pavlovsky Anannya Dasgupta Expository Writing 6 December 2011 Going away: The Dominant Strategy Humans often question their reality. We share a common, physical reality and create mental realities within ourselves; these mentally created worlds are purely in our heads and can only be entered by the individuals who created them. Upon entering their mental reality, a person can experience what appears on the outside to look like a detachment from the common physical reality; they cannot consciously function in two realities simultaneously. Some people experience these detachments only briefly, and live most of their lives mentally focused on the physical reality. In “When I woke up Tuesday Morning, It was Friday,” Martha Stout attempts to explain the excessive mental detachment a number of her therapy patients experience, and the reasons for their prolonged escapes to their mental realities. In his Selection From Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer investigates the travels of a man named Chris McCandless, attempting to explain McCandless’s decision to escape into the Alaskan wilderness in an attempt to go as far away from modern civilization as possible. Juhani Pallasmaa argues that one’s senses have great effects on their interpretation of the reality they are in; his argument brings up the question of whether both author’s escapees did not simply feel a lack of belonging to the realities they were originally in, and therefore decided to escape. “Going away” is the escape method an individual uses to move from consciously being in an unsatisfying reality to being in a different, fulfilling one.s To understand this concept, we must first understand what a reality is. A reality is a unique set of surroundings one perceives around them. Pallasmaa describes how cities around the

Pavlovsky 2 world have unique auras, claiming, “Every city has its spectrum of tastes and odors” (293). Pallasmaa’s declaration implies that during travel, one can determine when he has left one place he was in and entered a new one based on a change in the atmosphere around him. It can therefore be feasible that two people can see the same reality two slightly different ways, since things like tastes and odors are matters left to subjectivity. Krakauer’s description of the area McCandless died in is an example of the unique feel Pallasmaa claims each space has and an example of the way the same area can be interpreted two slightly different ways. While camping in Alaska near the bus which served McCandless as sanctuary, Krakauer expresses his displeasure with the atmosphere, noting that “There is something disquieting about this Gothic, overgrown landscape” (215). Krakauer finds McCandless’s shelter to be a place uninviting and strange. It is odd to observe that the very place that McCandless had decided offered him his blissful escape from the civilization he detested, Krakauer could not wait to get away from. Therefore, the same reality can be interpreted two different ways; while concrete things in the reality stay the same, and two different people will agree that the same rocks, trees, and clouds exist, the emotions the reality evokes in two people may be different. The aura a place gives off is not defined only by the reality’s physical appearance. Krakauer, for example, knows that a man died a terrible death near the bus in the Alaskan wilderness, and that changes the mood of the place incredibly for the author. These changes contribute to the reality as strongly as the area’s physical appearance, and complete the overall feel of the reality for the observer. In the physical world, an individual can only distinguish these types of features if they are “here” in the physical reality. In order to “be here,” a person’s mind and body must be aware of the same reality. Stout illustrates the way a man feels when he is “here”, noting that he “is awake, alert, and oriented to his surroundings” (388). Stout emphasizes that the man’s senses tell him that he is in the physical

Pavlovsky 3 reality; he is mentally aware of the same place he is physically in. As time goes on, the man’s behavior is determined by his interpretation of the events happening in the physical reality is he “here” in. The people he is around experience the same occurring events, and will most likely deem his behavior appropriate. Pallasmaa extends Stout’s assertion that a person needs to be mentally aware of his physical surroundings to be “here,” arguing that all of a person’s senses need to be utilized within that reality for them to fully be “here.” Pallasmaa criticizes modern culture, claiming that “dominance of the eye and the suppression of the other senses [within modern culture] tend to push us into detachment…” (286). Pallasmaa blames the repression of people’s senses as the reason they go away so often, and spend so much time not here. Pallasmaa implies that the only way to suppress the detachment that people feel is to employ all of one’s senses; this would allow the person to be in turn more alert and aware of their surroundings, the very thing Stout mentions is necessary in order for a person to “be here.” The person’s

awareness allows him to better interpret and react to the reality he is “here” in. Sometimes, however, that person looks for a way to escape the reality he is “here” in, and decides to “go away.” The act of “going away” can be done both mentally and physically. Stout illustrates how mental detachment, or mentally going away, occurs, describing how a man takes “the part of himself that worries about…real things, and [separates] it from the imaginative part of himself, so the imaginative part could have dominance” (388). While sitting in a movie theater, the man begins to forget about the chair he is sitting in, his current problems at work, and even the popcorn he bought; instead, the man imagines himself to be in the movie. He becomes clearly detached from the real world. This type of mental detachment is exactly what mentally going away is. When mentally away, one does not see nor hear the world physically around him. Instead, he is inside a world purely within his imagination. The imagined world becomes as real

Pavlovsky 4 to the person as the physical world was before the detachment. Their reality becomes what their imagination projects. When mentally back in the common reality, the person may not remember actions they have performed; the man Stout describes, for example, drops his popcorn while mentally away and does not remember how it happened afterwards. Krakauer extends the concept of “going away”, adding the choice of physically going away as he portrays how upon going away, McCandless was resolute on not seeing “a single person, no airplanes, no sign of civilization” (205). Upon his journey to self-discovery, McCandless decided that he was going to avoid a number of concrete things: the people, the airplanes, and the signs of civilization. It can therefore be implied that those particular things were the things that defined civilization to McCandless; to the young man, these were the things he was around when he was “here” in civilization. For that reason, McCandless chose to go away to the wilderness, a place devoid of people, airplanes, and signs of civilization, and therefore a place that allowed him to be away from civilization. For McCandless, the concept of “going away” had a physical connotation. McCandless found that he could only escape successfully when he was physically away from the civilization he was trying to escape. This type of physical separation differs from a mental separation in the very way in which it is done; while a mental separation is done within one’s mind, a physical separation is done within one’s physical world. The concept of “going away” encompasses these two types of separations. Utilizing either separation opens the window of opportunity for an escape. “Going away” from the common reality holds numerous benefits. Pallasmaa suggests that the clearest thinking is more likely to happen when one’s awareness is relaxed, declaring “in order to think clearly, the sharpness of the vision has to be suppressed, for thoughts travel with an absent-minded and unfocussed gaze” (286). Pallasmaa insinuates that thoughts are created most often when one is detached from the common reality of the physical world they are in, or

Pavlovsky 5 “away.” Therefore, if there is a need for creativity, it is logical that the person would attempt to “go away” so that they may find the ideas they are looking for. They consciously “go away” to a different reality to fulfill the need that they cannot find by staying “here” in common, physical reality. Pallasmaa’s advocacy of detachment can be extend to explain why McCandless was so eager to leave civilization and go as far into the wilderness as possible. During his investigation, Krakauer finds enough clues to determine that McCandless purposely left the common trail path in the Alaskan wilderness, mentioning, “it appears that McCandless lost (or intentionally left) the…Stampede Trail” (208). In looking for a more fulfilling reality, McCandless chooses to detach himself from the reality he knows, but McCandless chooses to “go away” physically instead of the mental way Pallasmaa describes. Nevertheless, McCandless’s decision shares a commonality with Pallasmaa’s concept in the fact that both the physical and mental detachments are done as acts of escape, in an attempt to find a reality better than the current one. Seth’s yearning to escape from his imagined reality, which he “goes away” to, however, questions whether “going away” is always a desirable choice. Seth describes how badly he wants to get rid of his disassociated reality because he can’t interact with other people and ends up missing important events in his life, confessing, “I realize that, really, I’ve missed most of my own life” (397). Seth expresses a longing to find a way to consistently be “here” in the physical reality he lives in. Whereas Pallasmaa and McCandless both viewed “going away” as escaping to a better place, Seth sees “going away” as being forced to a place he does not want to be in. Seth’s opinion inquires whether or not “going away” can be an undesirable action. If “going away” can be an unwelcome occurrence, this implies that the reality one is “here” in can be the optimal reality. “Going away” is a commonly employed method of escaping into a reality alternate from the one a person is in. The objective of “going away” is to find a more gratifying reality. The

Pavlovsky 6 question comes in when one examines what they are looking for specifically. As in Seth’s case, they may find that what will truly gratify them is not something they will find in “going away” at all; in fact, it is more effective for them to stay “here” as much as possible. Perhaps “going away” is not a dominant, advantageous strategy at all, but rather a choice that needs to be made with caution and discretion.