Identity and the Meaning of Life
Identity is a very important part of everybody. It defines who you are, what you think and what you believe in. Nobody has the same identity. To some people it is easy to find out who they are, but to others it is a long journey which includes things that most people do not try during their lives, for example to leave the civilization and live alone in the woods without any material advantages.

A:
“Into the Wild” by Sean Penn is about a boy called Chris. After his graduation he leaves his family to travel around on his own. Chris leaves because he cannot stand the focus on material advantages, and he also wants to run away from the dark secrets his parents have kept from him his whole life. Just like the character in Thoreau’s text “Walden”, Chris goes into the wild to get away from society and to live deliberately. Both of them want to get back to basics and away from materialism. The film is very critical towards society, and especially Chris’s parents try to make it look like everything is good on the outside even though the family is falling apart. The parents are not happy, but they stay together anyway because they are afraid of the opinions of other people. This is also a trace of the Puritain legacy where divorces were not accepted. The focus on the opinion of other people comes across in the first part of the film when Chris still is at home and his parents want to give him a new car because the other one is a wreck. The parents say to Chris that he has to have a new car because “What will the neighbours think.” In the world Chris comes from it is all about behaving nice where people can see you because a good reputation is important. Chris’s travel is both a physical and a mental travel. Physical because he moves to new places all the time and mental because of the development he goes through, this means