Beyond The Boundaries By Larry Lankton

The Gulf Between was wrote by Andre Siegfried. It had a big purpose during the time it was written. The Gulf between was created to talk about the “new society” that America has created. Siegfried was a Frenchman who has been to America numerous times, and made the comment that the life in America has changed. The Gulf Between tells the reasons why American society has been changing and why they are now in a new society. The audience for this section of the book could be for European natives, American natives, history majors, or anyone who is wanting to learn about American and their new society.

In his essay “The Country Just over the Fence,” Paul Theroux describes his trip to Nogales, Mexico. He begins his essay by illustrating the physical appearance of the wall separating Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico. He calls it “an unintentional masterpiece”. Theroux feels the wall is somewhat informal. He discovers that crossing the border into Mexico is not too difficult itself. He marvels over the appearance of the wall and also the underlying call to action it places on a person, “Do you go through, or stay home?” Theroux decided he needed to see for himself. After deciding to cross the border, he met many different people. They told him about the celebrations that used to be held between the two neighboring towns which are now divided by the wall. Theroux also met people who had attempted to cross the border illegally into America only to get sent back to Mexico. On his adventure, Theroux also learned about all the medical tourists who travel to the country for cheaper treatments, specifically dentistry. I am interested in discussing Theroux’s presentation of the his decision to cross the border, the people he met, and the medical tourism Nogales, Mexico draws in.

Recalling a story involving her immigrant great-grandparents and grandparents, Marquart states that they “traveled to the Midwest by train to what was the end of the line-Eureka, South Dakota. Eureka-from the Greek word heureka, meaning ‘I have found it’-is reported to have been the word that Archimedes cried when he found a way to test the purity of Hiero’s crown” (64-70). By alluding to Archimedes journey, Marquart indicates the excitement her family feels after the long migration to the Midwest. Articulating that Eureka means, “I have found it”, Marquart then redefines South Dakota as a place with substantial meaning to those who relocated here. She further emphasizes this impact when expressing that “My grandparents wouldn’t have known the etymology of the word, but they would have felt it, the anticipation, as they waited along with the other immigrants from Russia to receive their allotments of land” (70-74). Although her grandparent’s do not understand what Eureka means, South Dakota is seen as a place for starting over and building a better life, a different perception of those who only view the land as bleak and lacking. The Midwest represents opportunity to Marquart’s grandparents, creating a more profound, personal connection to the land. Furthermore, by alluding to Archimedes and providing

I don’t think that Krakauer should have been the person to write the book, since he was so opinionated on the subject. I think the book would have been better if it was less about how great he was and more about what actually happened in his life. To be fair, it did have a few facts about his life before he died, although maybe more would have been better. Krakauer’s opinion on McCandless is definitely different than my own, but that’s normal. Opinions aren’t all the same.

In the book “Into the Wild”, Jon Krakauer tells us the story about the life of a young man named Chris McCandless. Raised in a middle class family in Virginia, McCandless lived with his father, Walt; his mother, Billie; and his sister Carine. Chris was intelligent, athletic, extremely well rounded, and had a natural talent for anything he attempted. After graduating from Emory University with a bachelor’s degree, he tells his family that he plans to “disappear for a while”. What Chris does is he abandons his possessions, donates his entire life savings to charity, and hitch-hikes his way to Alaska to live alone in the wilderness. McCandless spent 112 days hunting animals and gathering plants for survival, however, on September 6th, 1992, his decaying body was discovered on an abandoned bus, starved to death. Although Chris made heedless decisions that subsequently drove him to his death, I admire him for his self-reliance, perseverance, and bravery.

Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild, is an insightful nonfiction story about a young man named Christopher McCandless and his wonderful journey cross country, all the way from Virginia to his final destination in Alaska. Throughout the novel Chris McCandless creates the name Alexander Supertramp, mostly because his trip was about reinventing himself and completing one of his lifelong dreams. The novel begins with the situation in which random bystanders who are hiking or hunting, find Christopher McCandless’s body in an abandoned bus in Fairbanks, Alaska and everything else that follows in the novel is the details about his traveling through multiple states. Even though the novel tells you exactly how Chris’ adventure ends, the reader is still compelled to read all the details about his experience because of how the author tells his story in such a captivating way. Although Chris did go to college, he spent every spare moment on breaks from school taking long road trips in yellow Datsun, which was in a way, his first taste of escaping society. Chris lived his last years on earth without being restrained by society and without really having to worry about needing money for everything he wanted to do in life. Chris still needed money during his adventures so for months at a time, twice during his journey, he would work at Wayne Westerberg’s, one of his close friends, grain elevator in Carthage, South Dakota and also briefly ends up working at a McDonalds in Bullhead

In the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, Kidder accompanies a doctor names Paul Farmer. Paul Farmer is a man who travels to different parts of the world including Peru, Haiti, Cuba and many more to help and cure patients with Tuberculosis(TB) and other illnesses. One of the illnesses that the books focuses on is multi drug resistant(MDR) TB. Multi drug resistant TB is a form in which a patient with TB forms or obtains a strain that is resistant to one or more drugs used to combat the illness. While trying to treat this illness, Farmer and his fellow colleagues had to overcome many obstacles. Out of the many obstacles faced, cost for medicine is one of the main ones.

In the poem “Facing It”, by the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, he himself is the one who is speaking, the poem is about his own life experience at the Vietnam Memorial. The way a person can tell if the own poet of the poem is the speaker is by the use of first person. In this case, the poet uses words like “I” and “I’m” that support the fact that he is the speaker. The Vietnam War was a Historical event taken place in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Which was one of the first War that African Americans were integrated with White people, and the majority of the soldiers were African Americans. Komunyakaa, being an African American soldier in the Vietnam War and surviving, is an honor, as not many African American’s survived. For Komunyakaa all his bad

“If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.” (Richard M. Nixon). In his investigative biography, Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer, expresses that even though young people can be ignorant and take treacherous risks, these can be used as knowledge enhancers and can be life changers. Krakauer gives us insight by giving examples of what risk really are, how people take them, and how it actually affects those people. Throughout the whole book, there are instances where Krakauer uses real life examples of things that have happened where people have taken risks and the outcomes of that. In general, one has to take risks in life to truly find oneself and Krakauer says “It can be argued that youthful derring-do is in fact evolutionarily adaptive, a behavior encoded in our genes” (182). Krakauer explains that for teenagers the idea of doing outrageous things comes easily to them because it’s only natural for them. Krakauer explains that for teenagers, doing crazy things is due to the fact that adventure lives in their blood and this has been going on for many centuries. For a teenager death and injury seems like a joke, they don 't even consider these, the absence of fear of death makes them feel invincible and causing them to take so many risks. There are so many examples in history of young people who have left so much behind only to start what they would believe is a new life. Krakauer includes a whole two

Many people undertake a mission for many reasons. It could be because they just people they feel like they have to do it or do it to protect someone or something. For example Ahmedi and Annie both undertake a dangerous mission to protect their families. They did this because they care about their family and if they didn’t their family would have gotten hurt, and Annie and Ahmedi would have just saved themselves or done nothing. That is why many people undertake a mission even if they are putting their lives at risk.

Paul Farmer came from a family who had little to offer him beside their outpouring love and sense of adventure. He had many places to call home, and would never really get comfortable in one spot because often his family would pick up and move. Farmer was inspired by great leadership, his father, growing up and would in turn become a great leader on his quest to rid the world of poverty and illness. Mountains Beyond Mountains written by Tracy Kidder, depicts Farmer’s mission to provide health care internationally and talks about all the difficulties that Farmer and his team had to overcome.

Approximately 185,000 amputations occur in the United States each year. (Kozak,1998). That’s 185,000 people who may be battling with finding themselves unable to connect to people in the U.S population due to their insecurities. Imagine what it is like for amputees trying to discover a companion to give them a long term loving relationship. Not everyone is accepting of someone who can unlatch their metal rod of a leg after a long day at work. In the article by Andy Greenburg, “A Step Beyond Human”, Hugh Herr tells his story about how when he was only 17 he lost both his legs due to a serious frostbite incident. According to the article “Relationships and Technology” by Joseph A. DeVito, it states that “Computer talk is empowering for those with physical disabilities or disfigurements” (DeVito, pg. 334). Through the advancements of technology, the disabled population is capable of boosting their confidence, meeting others, and bettering their quality of life.

The idea of torturing members of the enemy to pry out valuable information to gain advantage over the enemy during war is an idea used for thousands of years. Some civilizations went as far as to make an art out of this method by inventing horrific contraptions and tools to satisfy their inhumane and twisted minds. Regardless of how inventive the tools used, the main purpose is to inflict tremendous amount of pain and brutality to break the enemy’s will, so the detainee will render valuable information to stop the suffering. But, how effective is the method of torture?

This is appropriate, as both of these stories are aimed at being time capsules for a dying way of life as a means of cataloguing history. Just as Ishmael explained the art and trivialities of life as a whaler during the mid-1800’s, Hensley informatively outlines the activities and encounters regularly experienced by an Alaskan within an Indigenous community. These lifestyles met severe limitations, such as designating specific and exclusive roles for community members based on their sex (27&42-43); the importance of a cohesive community to promote surviving the open country (19); a lack of education to enable reading or writing skills (20); and the depravity of the people from basic medical and dental technologies available in other parts of the world, at the time (57). Gradually, it is explained how the rest of the world slowly poured into the territories of Alaska around the edges in the form of incoming trade shipments (65), the advancement of the film industry (62), and the encroachment of capitalist oil drilling (3).

Throughout his novel Everything Flows, Vasily Grossman provides numerous occasions for defining freedom. In the midst of attempting to give meaning to freedom, Grossman greatly invests in wrestling with the issue of why freedom is still absent within Russia although the country has seen success in many different ways. Through the idea and image of the Revolution stems Capitalism, Leninism, and Stalinism. Grossman contends that freedom is an inexorable occurrence and that “to live means to be free”, that it is simply the nature of human kind to be free (200-204). The lack of freedom expresses a lack of humanity in Russia, and though freedom never dies, if freedom does not exist in the first place, then it has no chance to be kept alive. Through Grossman’s employment of the Revolution and the ideas that stem from it, he illustrates why freedom is still absent from Russian society, but more importantly why the emergence of freedom is inevitable.