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Form of dissatisfaction or protest against modern society not only exist in real life but also emerges in literary works. They are portrayed in literary
works which can notice the social problem. The various personalities on every character in every literary works can be referred to as a form of the author
expression of his thought or ideas which is reflection in real life. As a student of English Literature, I want to discuss and analyze about the
relationship between backpacking life and modern society. The reason why I discuss the relationship is because of the dissatisfaction people toward modern
society and backpacking life which become an “escape “of some people in this era.
The research about backpacking is conducted, because not only to see and know how backpacking life it is, but also to understand message which is
implied in backpacking life and the relationship to modern society.
1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic
In this modern life, our world is a heaven for us; people live and being served like a king. Technology has answered any answers. Anything what they want,
whenever they want to, can be prepared as fast as possible. But they have to work hard as a consequence.
They have to work by schedule; each of their minute is accounted to decide their next life. But human’s mind is never satisfied. The mind is never
satisfied with the object immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity. The
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natural flights of the human are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. Samuel Johnson As they feel sufficed as greater they feel
uncomfortable. In this novel one of the backpackers, the main character John McCandless, because of unharmonious and neglecting parents, hated why
modern society always hurt each other, and wonder why life is full of falsity. So by backpacking, he decided to run from modern life. He wanted to reach
his ultimate goal: live alone in Alaska. Like Lord Byron poem’s said” There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love man the less, But nature more…”
The first reason I choose this topic is because backpacking is a new traveling genre which well known in Europe, America including Asia itself.
While traveling with modern touch such as; Luxurious hotels, traveling wherever and whenever they want by plane and another modern
transportation, backpacking offer its natural and originality of traveling and adventure has been flourishing in Western. Many of them are students and
some people who want to spend their holiday and want to travel around the world. While in other side, Backpacking is a controversial subject: while often
imagining themselves as the ‘real’ travellers as against the conventional tourists e.g. Uriely et al., 2002; Welk, backpackers are often condemned for
their appearance, conduct – especially sexual freedom and use of drugs – superficiality, stinginess and seclusion in backpacker enclaves
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Second, the main character of this movie showed his protest against modern live by backpacking, simple living without any limitation of time and
rule. He did not want to live in “golden cage” and falsity of life that he had live. He realized the modern and society had not answered what people want,
world still full of inequality and paradox thing, such as; we can eat and get what we want but we can find hunger and starvation in Sudan and Ethiopia,
problems of race and ethnicity which still arise in each country, and etc. Third, the story of John McCandless spent his rest of life into the wild,
sent all of his saving of life to Oxfam; which suppose to be his fund of university, wandering everywhere without money is based on true story,
which has published on the book “into the wild” 1996 by John Krakauer also the movie “into the wild” 1997 directed by Sean Penn.
For all those reason, I regard this is an interesting and reasonable theme to be analyzed.
1.3 Statements of the Problem
