I feel that Chapters 3 and 4 definitely signaled a shift in the
narrator’s attitude and behavior, though not as much as I would have liked. Instead
of the reserved, undemanding and dully satisfied person he was before his
divorce, the narrator is now more daring and energetic. He sets out to the West
with only a few belongings, agrees to travel with a fellow hitchhiker, and gets
intoxicated on a truck ride with others. However, although he has expanded his
boundaries, the narrator is still holding himself back. In my opinion, he is
still passive and too generous; he lends Eddie his shirt when Eddie gets
chilly, yet gets a cold himself. Additionally, he fails to get mad or argue,
viewing Eddie as only “absent-minded” when Eddie jumps onto a trailer and
abandons him in the middle of an empty Shelton.
Personally, I
was interested in the narrator’s description of “the greatest ride in [his]
life” on the truck with the others. It was a situation unlike any other he thought
would happen to him –sitting on a truck flatboard with eclectic people he’d
never met while it headed to the West coast of Los Angeles. In addition to this
divergence from the norm, I believe that the narrator immensely enjoys the trip
because he can soak up and study the varying attitudes of others onboard. What
I strongly disliked, however, was the narrator’s continual desire to be
reunited with Dean and other ‘friends’. The narrator leaves his house intending
to go on a journey, yet this narrow-minded goal to meet with them at Denver
causes him to give up all the opportunities he has to truly explore the West;
he turned down chances to travel with a circus, and a free, straight ride to
Los Angeles.
I agree with Sharon in that there was a shift in the narrators attitude in this chapter. No longer was he too concerned with having strictly intellectual conversations or things of the like, but he was more laidback, and in a way, more down to earth. I think this is a result of the fact that he has been hitch hiking and the experiences he has had while doing so.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with Sharon in that she dislikes the "narrator's continual desire to be reunited with Dean and other friends" because that was the narrators goal from the beginning, and he cannot be blamed for not losing focus. Sure, he did give up other opportunities to explore the west, but that does not mean that he will not have similar opportunities in the future. I think that the narrator knows this, and that he wants to take things one step at a time. Maybe after he settles down in Denver and is reunited with everyone he will decide that he wants the explore the west further.