Society kills our individuality, our thoughts, and our ideas. Most people try so hard to please society to achieve acceptance, where on the other hand we are just blocking ourselves from our wonderful ideas in fear of being neglected. Mentally our lives deteriorate when we live like society wants us to live. Society has created a life that is beyond the definition of survival. "I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighborAt present I am a sojourner in civilized life again" (1). Henry David Thoreau's Walden conveys that society has created a world where everything is based around money, and our individualism is taken away. Thoreau tries to explain how society is based on "survival of the fittest," where the best people get the better jobs, and the more money. In this way Thoreau contradicts the meaning of survival demonstrating how society is materialistic and how the only thing keen to our survival is how we can live for ourselves and think by ourselves. .
Actions have to be controlled in order to survive. Thought has to be looked upon before we follow through with something. Herman Melville's Billy Budd demonstrates that our actions could lead to our deaths without our knowledge of it and the more we use our minds, the better. "The next instant, quick as the flame from a discharged cannon at night, his right arm shot out and Claggart dropped to the deck" (56). It's amazing how fast our lives could change. For Billy his actions werent thought upon and now he is a dead man. Our emotions need to be controlled instead of controlling us. If we let our emotions get out of hand then we react more on how we feel, yelling when we are mad, crying when we are sad, instead having self control. .
Determination and unification are two main aspects needed to survive. In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Huck is determined to help Jim survive. Huck and Jim stick together through the rough times they encounter, but when Jim is put into slavery, Huck is determined to save him.