Saturday, August 31, 2013

Week 2 Reaction

In this week’s reading the journey finally begins after a slow start.  The next two chapters seem to set the tone for what I assume will be the entire story.  The main character’s happy go lucky spirit pours out of every decision he makes.  He simply loves travelling, and has no fear of strangers or hitchhiking.  The setting of the story is kind of hard to connect to due to the serious time difference.  Hitchhiking is no longer acceptable, the amount of farmers has seriously diminished, and only a few travelling circuses actually remain.  It is hard to relate to the spirit of the open road, because I really haven’t travelled across the U.S. with a bunch of strangers and a few friends.  I’m assuming a larger section of the story will center on Denver due to the amount of hype the main character is giving it.  With the majority of his friends already in Denver, I am really anticipating the Denver section of the book to be rather important and central to the theme of this story.  I also find it interesting in how much of the story takes place on the open road.  When I drove from Dallas to Miami there wasn’t a whole lot of stuff to describe or really talk about in an interesting way, yet Jack Kerouac has written an interesting 300 page novel about just that.  Another thing that I think definitely doesn’t relate to our time period is the quality and kindness of the strangers.  They have lots of respect and care for the hitchhikers, and don’t seem to mind having someone to talk to on their individual journey’s.     

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