Krakauer the Subversion of Felicity Essay

In fact, the exercise of liberty is oftentimes one of the principle producers of unhappiness. People tend to relish and utilize their freed will by thinking doing so will make them feel felicitous. On the contrary, many times free will can actually account for scenarios that are counterproductive to happiness, which is why Gilbert writes "We have no trouble anticipating the advantages that freedom may provide, but we seem blind to the joys it can undermine" (Gilbert, 142). A certain undermining of the pleasure in life is demonstrated by the free will of Julia, one of the patients in Martha Stout's essay "When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning it Was Friday." Left to her own volition, Julia was so unhappy with her life that she attempted to kill herself, as the following quotation indicates. "…she expected not to be found until well after she had frozen to death" (Stout, 386). Julia's liberty to do what she wanted to with her life resulted in an unhappiness so profound that she attempted to kill herself -- because she did not know how to make herself happy. This undermining of joys that liberty accounts for is definitely shown in McCandless's experience. No one forced him to journey to the wilderness of Alaska. The young man chose to do so of his own volition, believing that the autonomy and exercise of his free will afforded there with no people to infringe on his desires would ultimately bring him happiness. What it ultimately brought, him, however, was far from happiness, as the following quote suggests. "But why did he then stay at the bus and starve" (Krakauer, 214). As a result of the starvation MccCandles endured, the young man died. His exercise of liberty was directly related to the unhappiness produced by his death.

In many ways, McCandless provides textbook examples for the concepts propagated by Gilbert about people's ignorance of what makes them happy. Had McCandless stayed where the youngster originally was in the continental U.S., Gilbert's notions suggest McCandles would have eventually found happiness by growing accustomed to his surroundings. His exercise of free will and the choices it presented him, however, which he thought would engender…