Henry David Thoreau's Walden, Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild, and Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man all tell the stories of a real-life character who makes the decision to adventure in the desert alone. On the one hand, Chris McCandless (Into The Wild), Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man) and Thoreau are similar in many ways. All three men record some sort of documentation of their journey; McCandless and Thoreau keep a diary while Treadwell keeps a video log. Furthermore, all three forced themselves to actually live off the land, using only the bare minimum. On the other hand, men had many differences. In two stories, Into The Wild and Grizzly Man, the main character dies because of his choice to live this way, while in Walden Thoreau survives throughout his experience. However, the most important differences between the characters were their reasons for venturing into the wilderness in the first place. Henry David Thoreau went into the woods “because [he] wished to live deliberately, to face only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could learn what it had to teach, and not, when [he] came to die. , to discover that [he] had not lived" (Thoreau, chapter II). His goal was to live his life simply but richly in the desert. Chris McCandless went into the woods for a similar but different reason. McCandless was against living life in a traditional way. He went into the wilderness to escape society and the traditional lifestyle. He wanted to prove to himself that he could survive in the wilderness, away from everything and everyone else. Finally, Timothy Treadwell embarks on his journey into the wilds of Alaska for what he says is the protection of the bear population. His goal is to protect bears from... middle of paper... by taking extreme measures. Henry David Thoreau, Chris McCandless, and Timothy Treadwell were three men who made the decision to go into freedom because they were dissatisfied with their current lifestyle. It was a huge risk and two of the men paid the ultimate price with their lives. There were better options for all three that didn't involve putting their lives in danger. Not everyone has to go into the wild for months at a time to overdo it. There is no need to do anything other than what most people in the world do on a daily basis because that is what has allowed society to progress for centuries. Professional athletes and US presidents have all followed the same formula for success and have arrived at their destination without any problems. The traditional way of life is tried and true, and there is nothing that people cannot accomplish by following it.