There are a lot of questions unanswered about the ‘Grizzly Man’ Timothy Treadwell: Was he insane? Did he really believe he was a bear? Was his death intentional/predictable that day? Did he do any good in the time he spent in the wilderness?
To answer the latter three questions, one first has to settle on the debate of his [in]sanity. I believe Timothy Treadwell was just a human being who gave up on life- I’m no doctor, or even psych major, so I can’t diagnose any mental illnesses based on my observations. But what I took from the documentary was: here was a man with an extremely unstable past who enjoyed being very high one moment, and very low the next. His failing acting career turned him to drugs, alcohol, etc. And when the drugs/money wore off, he decided ‘To Hell with society, I’ll go live with some bears.’ I do not think he thought he was a bear, but rather lived with them and talked to them as if they were his pets or part of his family. The controversy surrounding his death stems from the facts that A) the camera was turned on; B) the lens cap was still on the camera; C) Timothy explicitly stated that he’d be content with dying right there in that park, protecting his bears. Whether or not he had provoked the bear in some way we can never know, but I think we can all agree that his girlfriend’s death was tragic due to the fact that she had a completely different perspective about bears than Timothy. It was not her wish to die saving the bears, and she expressed her not wanting to interfere with them. I think in the end, Timothy did more harm to both himself and the bears because all the hype (positive and negative) about his years spent there is meaningless- he’s dead and there is no possible way to know the true answers to these questions.
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I argued in class last Thursday that I think his death could have been premeditated. I think this because of all your reasons of A, B, and C. All those facts of having the camera turned on, his death being the day he was planned to leave the wilderness, and him previously saying that he would rather die with the bears than live in society all point to it being premeditated. I don't know for sure if that is true, but was what that something you were pointing out in this post?
ReplyDeletei think he was just putting on a show. the fact that he turned the camera on is strange. If my gf and me were being attacked, turning on a camera would be the last thing on my mind
ReplyDeleteI am still unsure whether Timothy's death was premeditated or not. If it were, what must he have done to egg on the bear to attack and kill him and his girlfriend? It seems he must have gotten way too close to the bear in a harmful manner which would have gone against his mission of being in Alaska. I believe it was an odd series of events leading up to his death but I truly believe he did not want to harm the bears (whether he did or not in terms of conditioning them to humans is another issue.) It seems there are so many issues up in the air regarding Timothy Treadwell and his work/lifestyle. Many speculations and view points seem to have merit but every piece of the puzzle will probably be left unknown for sure.
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