In my many years on this Earth, I have found that there are many aproaches to life. In the latest unit of my AP English course, we have read three works regarding the subject of life and what it means. All three show distinctly different approaches to life, wether taking a good thing and making it bad, or turning a broken life into something new.

The first of these works is Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild.



In this novel, Krakauer tells the story of Chris McCandless, and his great Alaskan adventure. Chris desired true freedom in his life, and saw that as the only true purpose. He wanted to become purely self-reliant, and live off of the land. In the end, Chris' quest for a free life, is what killed him. He took something good, freedom, and pushed it to an extreme.

"Chris taught us that sometimes you can have too much of a good thing."
-Sam Dickey

The second work was The Death of Ivan Ilych, a novella by Leo Tolstoy.



In what this piece of classic literature, Tolstoy depicts the life of a man that lived his whole life seeking comfort. He wanted to be stable and secure, seeking that in everything, but in the end he felt as if his life was not fufilled. Any time he had the ability, he made comfort his top priority, but some things just cannot be controlled. At one point he lost his job and had to push hard to return to finnancial security. After he made it there, he held grudges because the men in charge had taken away the thing most important to him. Eventually he got sick and could not, as hard as he tried, be comfortable. Ultimately that tore him apart. He realized that there is more to life, and more importantly, that he missed out on it.

"Some men live more in 20 years than others do in 80"
-David Tennant

The final work, another novella by Tolstoy, was The Forged Coupon.



The Forged Coupon tells the stories of many characters who were all deeply effected by one counterfet note. The seemingly small event led to loss, betrayal, even murder, but ultimately shows the meaning in life. One man, Stepen, found himself in jail for murder. His life changed after he experienced Jesus through scripture in solitary. He eventually let go of his shame and guilt and found true purpose. Another character in Tolstoy's story was named Chuev. His story, slightly less extreme, showed him in prison for leaving orthodox values. He found that the only true and good values were the ones demonstrated in the life of Christ. Both of these men found true purpose.

"I believe in two things, discipline and the Bible... Here you'll receive both."
-Warden Samuel Norton