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There are two of them, wish you could see them. Two twins, British, golden curly goldilocks. Glittery Spice Girls makeup. I spot them from across the club, our eyes exchange and there is a look of understanding in both of our eyes, we are both not meant to be here. We are in SOS Club in China’s most wild-west city, Kunming, the “Eternal Spring City.” It sure feels like Spring, with all of the childish looks bouncing between us and the goldilocks, Spring with all the hay fever on account of the pollen in their hair. But they are not meant to be here more than I am not meant to be here. They sit at a table and immediately attract a crowd of young boys with their foreign looks. It’s our side versus their side, British and Americans recruiting our own locals to wage our wars. On our side is Jojo, Chocolate, and Linch – three college students forced into being our tour guides for the week. You could say we dragged them to this club, but they seem to be having a good time. Jagged green lights controlled by the DJ sitting above make us look like we’re on Mars, Martians, this is alien warfare. I look across at the table again. Look at them, with their blonde curls, they must think they’re Queen Elizabethan twins, you know that type, party diplomats surrounded by native cohorts to wash their pretty, long, pink feet – native cohorts with their tanned skin. I think Queen Elizabeth was a blonde. I see drinks go up in the air at their table, and one man, probably twenty-three or so, takes his shirt off to reveal a chiseled Great Wall body. Queen Elizabeth number one strokes his chest distastefully, so much for British etiquette. Where did the corsets and bitter tea get them? Nowhere. I put a cigarette in my mouth, silently cringing from the gross taste. Stubborn, I prop my feet on the table. I’m wearing a pair of fake Nike shoes I had Jojo help me haggle for at the hidden shoe store. You can only arrive there with a true Kunming guide who knows how to navigate through the mazing alleyways of the hutongs. Yeah, it’s a big deal. I show off my shoes on the table; I need to look cooler, can’t let them win this. But my team, aside from the college student tour guides, is just a bunch of ninnies. What do I do with them? Piper’s the only one who speaks Chinese and she doesn’t even smoke. Alex only had two shots of beer and he’s already pretending to be incoherent, he was always a fake, Alex. Stephanie Winters, the loner girl that nobody really likes who tries too hard to be friends with people. She’s pretty drunk and being a little loud; but nobody approaches us to tell us to leave, we rock this club. And lastly, sitting next to me, Samson, a big fool incapable of handling any mature situation. Then I see something absolutely atrocious. The twins are making out with each other. Queen Elizabeth kissing her reflection in the mirror, gross. And the cohort boys are all cheering - if they didn’t they may be banished from their empire, maybe forced to go to Lijiang or Xianggelila three hours away, or somewhere. Yeah, we had the loser team. Just look at them at their table, shrouded in Spring green light; their team had twins, their boys were in better shape than ours – we only had Jojo and Chocolate, and they are a lesbian couple, what guys are they gonna attract to our table? Plus they won’t even make out with each other. There was only one way left to win – bring it to the dance floor. After sufficiently intoxicated, except for Alex, no way of telling with him, we make our way to the dance floor. Stephanie is a little too dizzy so she stays behind with Linch and loser Piper. There we are dancing right in the middle of the floor, right near the DJ. Locals join in and our army grows larger, cooler, we rock this club. The twins notice what’s going on within their castle and with peering eyes, as if initiating a challenge, proceed to the dance floor. A song blasts as if to commence the battle, the lyrics I don’t understand a single word. Then the worse happens; the twins start dancing, I mean really dancing, with each other, like the way you see it happen in Pussycat Dolls, like that one British member of Pussycat Dolls, only multiplied by two. I think there’s a British Pussycat Doll. Everyone in the club is entranced by their slut dance. Here my team is, Alex just hopping around, he never goes to any of the high school dances, Samson throwing his arms around thinking he’s in a music video, and Jojo and Chocolate stand motionless, entranced by the twins. We’ve lost, we are nobody in this club, nobody knows who we are. But then something happens, something amazing, a real flag-was-still-there miracle. Stephanie is suddenly on the dance floor, whipping out dance moves like the American Pussycat Dolls, like the hottest one they always put in the front. And she’s taller than those two twins stacked one on top of the other. Stephanie, not as pretty, but she’s still got those foreign looks everybody makes a big deal over, and she’s got the dance moves, just thank the Queen that I got her drunk enough. All the guys, even the cohort boys from the Queens’ table come over to Stephanie. They surround her in a sort of circle, everyone dancing like natives, Stephanie still dancing like Pussycat Dolls. The twins are gone, they have lost, and we have officially won the club over. We rock this club. Even Piper comes down to join us, maybe she’ll start smoking tomorrow. And Stephanie, she dances all night long until she passes out in a booth, only to wake up for Chinese class back at camp in a few hours, only to wake up as her old Stephanie self, that girl nobody wants to know. Stephanie’s not bad, a little awkward, but I saw another side of her tonight. I think I’m really starting to understand people. Screw Britain.

Interview with Author Rory Fewer
 
Q: What influenced or inspired you when writing this story?
 
A: This story is based on an experience I had when I was fifteen years old. I was with a student group traveling to Southwest China for the first time; I experienced things that I then perceived as camaraderie, and those feelings made me feel like I was making the most of my youth. Now that I look back on that trip, I can see how ignorant I was, not only towards the local culture, but also toward everybody in general. This is what inspired the character in my story.
 
Q: What did you think about when deciding on an appropriate voice for the narrator?
 
A: I wanted the narrator to seem younger, a high school student who thinks he knows everything about the world, and I tried to convey this by structuring the grammar very loosely, following a stream-of-consciousness style the way Kerouac does in On The Road. The way that Kerouac presents the reader with characters who romanticize events that people would otherwise regard as nonromantic, I similarly try to convey this type of situation through the experience of an immature teenager in his pursuit of the “cool.”
 
Q: How did this semester’s readings influence how you wrote this story?
 
A: I kept Kerouac in mind as I tried to maintain a somewhat youthful quality to the story. I tried to liken the club to something similar to the brothel scene in On The Road or the many bar scenes in The Sun Also Rises; the theme of drinking and living for the day was of great influence. This story brings up the theme of colonization that appears in The Elephanta Suite when the narrator talks about owning the local people as members of a ridiculous imagined army, or jokes about the local people being exiled from their own land by the English twins. I bring up how people perceive the foreign when I talk about the foreign features of people and how that makes them stand out from the locals, especially when I mention the long feet, which I intended to directly reference foot-binding while conveying the reader’s ignorance in his interpretation of a modern China. There is not only ignorance toward the local culture, but also unfounded hostility toward the British. I played around with the theme of homosexuality that comes up in The Sun Also Rises, The Comfort of Strangers, Sputnik Sweetheart, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and On The Road, with the intended effect of furthering the idea that one needs to stand out in society. The narrator’s very American, individualistic mentality is seen trying to manifest itself in Chinese society, which is based on collectivism; I took this idea from A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. In the end, there is a sort of integration with the local people when they are all dancing together, but the narrator remains stubborn and ignorant.
 
Q: What you would say this the main theme of the story you were trying to work with?
 
A: The story is really about a foreigner trying to be more authentic than the other foreigner. The hostility towards the twins is just a reflection of the narrator’s own insecurity in being perceived as a tourist. The fake shoes were meant to suggest that while he thinks he is somewhat authentic for having his tour guide help him buy the shoes, the shoes are inauthentic, just like him.

There are many things about Sputnik Sweetheart that made me really enjoy reading this novel, such as the honest and simple approach the writing takes. However, there are many things about the novel that remain unknown to me, but I think this is more of an intended effect rather than a misunderstanding. The Greek island is like something out of a fantasy. It is hidden from many of the other tourists, it is it beautiful, and it doesn’t even have a name, suggesting it doesn’t actually exist in this world. On this island, strange things happen. Sumire disappears and the protagonist imagines hearing an entire music concert that doesn’t actually exist, two instances that add to the feeling that the island is otherworldly. Through disappearing into this fantasy world, we are given the feeling that Sumire reconciles the unknown. Throughout the novel, the protagonist explains how many things remain unknown to Sumire, such as sexual desire and what her mother was like. She discovers these things for the first time on the island, through her sexual experience with Miu and through the dreams she has of her mother, and afterwards simply disappears as if there is nothing left in the real world that she needs explained. In this way, traveling accentuates the theme of personal discovery and reconciliation.


The frequent references to Kerouac’s On The Road mark that this novel is, in a way, a retelling of On The Road. Sumire is somewhat similar to Sal in that they are both authors trying to experience the world in order to have experiences they can write about. It only makes sense that Miu, Sumire’s “traveling companion” is likened to Dean, and this makes sense because at the end of On The Road, Dean ad Sal are separated, which parallels the separation between Sumire and Miu. We see Miu change at the end of the book into a different person, as seen through the protagonist when he examines her from a neighboring car. Miu’s strange experience with the unknown, the incident of the ferris wheel, is what suggests that she will never move on the way Sumire has. In this way, she is a little like Dean, who we saw becoming more and more pathetic in his resistance to change.


The motif of Sputnik is interesting, because Sputnik itself is so far away. Although located in space, we still have a vague sense that Sputnik exists somewhere, however far away and irrelevant to our world that place may be. This is the how the protagonist and Miu feel about the disappearance of Sumire; she is like Sputnik, located somewhere far away, but not dead. The way Sputnik marked the beginning of the space age, Sumire similarly marks a new beginning as she breaks a barrier between our world and the unknown. It is unclear whether or not Sumire really comes back in the end of the novel, and the ambiguity of the ending leaves the reader, like Sumire, in the unknown. 

The author chooses to play around with many words, between languages and between translations, to strengthen the appearance of specific themes in the novel. The protagonist will describe Europe through what she knows of China, such as when she says London is like a piece of the Gobi Desert, or how West Berlin resembles Beijing. One important observation of putting things into familiar Chinese terminology is when Zhuang says that the Korean and Japanese girls in her language class are her “comrades.” The author is making reference to an earlier Maoist era, in which people would greet each other as “同志”, or comrade; this detail makes the reader think back to everything the protagonist has likened to Maoist thought, such as the bolded quotes that provide direction for Zhuang. But this word in modern China has surfaced as a slang word for homosexual, which makes reference to theme of homosexuality in this book. Though we do not see the protagonist engage in anything but heterosexual relationships, the frequent references to homosexuality function to explain a larger theme of sexual discovery, and personal discovery, in this book. Likewise, these “comrades” are the friends that introduce her to the vibrator, which is the first step for Zhuang in becoming a sexually independent woman. In fact, the bolded Maoist quotes are strangely similar in appearance to the bolded condom instructions, or the bolded directions on how to successfully masturbate. What this signifies is that all of these bolded things fit into a theme of liberation and personal discovery. The frequent misusage of the word “seduce” also works to convey sexual discovery while maintaining a theme of translation and misunderstanding.
 
Although she is now in Europe, the “free world” away from Communist China, Zhuang has a significant realization that she is not really free as a foreigner. As she notes, the English man she loves can afford to be so uninvolved with the rest of the world because of his passport type. Zhuang doesn’t have this luxury, and she conveys this through the deliberate misspelling, “ill-legal.” The choice of spelling conveys that the experience of immigration is just like a physical ailment, it is a process that saps a person of their strength. Another instance of a misspelling is the word “demon-strators,” which fits into the theme of immigration because people who strive for social change are often perceived as “demons” by those who resist it.
 
The author also chooses to make allusions to other works related to this one, such as when the protagonist calls herself a “woman warrior” on several different instances, which is a reference to Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior, a story about cultural self-discovery, as is the story of Z. The purpose of this is to strengthen the theme of personal discovery in this novel. When the protagonist begins to talk about translation, such as when she mentions the difference of tense used in both languages, she is relating back to larger themes while at the same time leading us to understand a cultural difference, especially a difference between thought processes. Personally reading the passage in which two paragraphs are juxtaposed, one in Chinese and one in English, I felt like I was reading two different interpretations of the same idea, with two very different weights. This was interesting for me, because it made me realize how people can think differently while within the world of another language. The theme of translation, understanding, self-discovery, and the confusion that comes all of these things is cleverly conveyed through the protagonist’s imperfect English and the process of discovering her own voice in the world. 

The author plays around with a theme that we haven’t really touched upon in class, which is the idea that a foreigner can change the ways of the native people of the place he travels to. This is interesting in The Elephant God especially, because Alice notes that her influence on the Indians’ English language abilities changes their personalities. This idea of a new personality is conveyed as something bad, because she is stalked and raped afterwards by Amitabh. This is significant because it is really her actions that changed the originally helpful and sensitive Amitabh into a type of unfeeling monster that comes back to hurt her. Perhaps this is somehow a reflection on the faults of American culture, specifically sexism, since the story involves Alice teaching him how to speak “American,” and through this changes his personality for the worse.


Sexism is a strong theme in this novel. In The Gateway of India, we see Dwight take advantage of several different women, all desperate because they need money. Interestingly enough, Dwight doesn’t at first recognize that he is exploiting the native people. He instead feels that he is gradually becoming more “Indian,” and this may be true at the end when he finally gives up his life as a rich businessman to seek spiritual enlightenment. However, he must first realize that he is not a saint for leading these girls out of poverty as he would like to believe but instead a sexual fiend. This moment of transformation happens when he realizes that even the partner he respects most, Shah, knows of his sexually perverse lifestyle. The fact that everybody is connected in a social network and everybody knows everything makes Dwight’s actions a crime against the Indian people as a whole. This novel does this to draw a strong distinction between America and India. A similar technique used to draw contrast is when Alice must fight for her case to be seen in court, it appears that it is her against all of Indian society.


Dwight’s transformation is paralleled to Shah’s transformation. The character of Shah may also be a reflection of the faults of American society, as America turns Shah into an impersonal, conniving jerk. Shah even seems to plot to get rid of Dwight by introducing him to a spiritual path. It seems that with both Dwight and Alice, they first get caught up in a type of unrealistic mentality in which they think they are living an authentic Indian lifestyle. But this notion of integration is phony. Dwight has to lure people to him with money he earned as an American businessman, and Alice has to pay her way through this minimalistic spiritual retreat center, which hypocritically frowns upon anything related to money-making. Dwight eventually realizes his disgusting ways and Alice realizes that her once imagined spiritual environment cannot be applied to the real world (Swami does not give her helpful information when she goes to him for help after being violated). At the end, these characters become completely authentic, because they realize who they really are and what matters to them in the world. They finally learn to see things as they truly are.

The story starts with Colin and Mary, portrayed as usual tourists. They bring their maps everywhere they go, they visit the most famous touristic locations, and they eat at the same familiar restaurants over and over again. The usual tourist is willing to travel, but not exactly eager to explore a foreign location. This all changes when they meet Robert, bringing them into the authentic culture of the place for the first time. Robert is conveyed as an image of authenticity because he knows everybody in the city, and owns a bar where all the locals go. But this chance to explore the true culture of their location may be more terrifying than rewarding. When reading this novella, I felt the first instances of scariness when Colin and Mary are taken to Robert’s house for the first time. Caroline is locked up, and it is significant that she is Canadian because it foreshadows how Colin and Mary, also foreigners, will become confined to a strange world. On top of this, Robert punches Colin and Caroline admits to watching them sleep naked.


Strangely enough, it is the terror of certain situations that seems to bring Colin and Mary closer together. First they fantasize about being subjected to the horrifying positions of sex slaves, and this brings them to greater intimacy. But this terror suddenly becomes a reality when Mary remembers the picture of Colin at Robert’s house. Instead of reacting with only fear, Mary also wants to have sex with Colin, conveying that the worlds of fear and love are being convoluted. This happens again when Mary nearly drowns in the ocean; when she is finally rescued by Colin she notes at how beautiful the circumstances are. Perhaps this type of fantasy has obscured the real meaning of terror and danger for Colin and Mary, and that is why they both return to Robert’s house, even though they have already discussed the terrifying incidents of Robert’s household with each other. This longing for fear becomes stranger when Caroline describes similar feelings between her and Robert. This part of the novella is alarming, because it draws a comparison between Robert and Caroline, and Mary and Colin. The fact that they are in a foreign location suggests that this infatuation with fear is just like travelling for Mary and Colin; they are able to explore a foreign world through this terror.


This novella offers a very unique interpretation of the concept of travel. For some tourists, it does not matter if they only travel by maps and visit the most famous of places. In the situation of Colin and Mary, they begin to fantasize about a different world, and the boundaries of reality between this world and the real world become convoluted, just as the interpretation of a foreign location can become. Some people travel and feel that they are in an unreal world when in a foreign location. In the end, Colin and Mary suffer greatly for taking the situation of danger as unrealistic. McEwan warns us of the dangers that come when the world of fantasy crosses into the world of reality.  
 

The idea of place in Mann’s Death in Venice plays a significant role in conveying the protagonist’s infatuation with a young boy; this is because the protagonist’s infatuation with the location parallels his self-discovery. In the beginning of the novella, the reader is met with descriptions of Aschenbach’s “roving unrest,” which is explained as a “youthful longing after far-off places.” Aschenbach has “never known the careless freedom of youth,” because he was forced out of a normal childhood due to his artistic talent. These quotations suggest that his desires to travel are related to discovering this youthful freedom that he never had himself. An important concept introduced is Aschenbach’s idea of the hero, which goes hand-in-hand with his personal discover and longing for a true childhood. Aschenbachs ideal hero possesses “dominance in the realm of beauty,” “a pallid weakness” and a “charming manner.” All these descriptions are eventually manifested by a young Polish boy Aschenbach spots while travelling in Venice, furthering the theme of travel as related to self-discovery.

This Polish boy, Tadzio, becomes an object of worship to Aschenbach, as he represents everything Aschenbach wishes he could internalize himself. The boy is sickly, weak in appearance, and Aschenbach states that he probably does not have long to live. This suggest that Tadzio’s youth is an image of eternal youth. His name in translation contains the word “deus,” further signifying his godly portrayal. It is also significant that the two do not share a common language; this suggests a lack of communication, and leads the reader to realize that the two will forever be of two different worlds. This is the disposition of the traveler; he will always be a foreigner, which conveys that Aschenbach will never be able to return to his youth. Aschenbach describes Venice romantically, even in descriptions that do not seem the least bit appealing. His infatuation in the location is merely an infatuation with Tadzio. As he cannot understand what Tadzio says in his foreign language, Aschenbach is similarly foreign in his current location. Aschenbach describes Tadzio as Eros, Roman god of love, and also makes reference to other ancient Roman gods in his romantic descriptions of Venice. This shows that he holds a spiritual connection with both the boy and the land. Perhaps it is the concept of youth to which he is truly foreign. Aschenbach sees himself in the image of Tadzio, and near the end of the novella he changes his appearance to match the youthfulness of Tadzio. However, Aschenbach will never be able to truly transform into Tadzio, and at the end he dies, signifying the impossibility of his endeavors. In a way, Aschenbach finally meets Tadzio in death; he can finally “escape” to his spiritual interpretation of youthful freedom.

When people lose a connection with the place they name “home,” they may leave that place in an attempt to redefine what “home” is. This loss of connection is what spurs the motivation for travel. In this essay, three novels will be introduced to examine the effect of this loss of “home.” The characters described have all been influenced by war in their decision to leave America and search for authentic experience in foreign locations. Their experiences function to convey how authenticity of a place is lost and in what kinds of environments that authenticity can be rediscovered.


In Kerouac’s On the Road, the protagonist, Sal, along with his best friend Dean travel together from America into Mexico. Sal and Dean have originally been traveling across America in an effort to experience authentic Western culture and the freedom this lifestyle cultivates. However, after many authentic experiences, their American surroundings begin to show signs of artificiality. Sal describes a “gorgeous country girl,” characterized by “emptiness,” and not having “the slightest idea of what she wanted” (242). The country girl symbolizes the transformation of the American West from a place of true character and culture to one bleak and void of meaning. The girl has no direction in life and seems to have no problem doing what other people decide for her, which is a contradiction to the free lifestyle Sal and Dean pursue. Likewise, Sal notices a “horrible sight in the bar” while at a jazz club: a “white hipster fairy” playing with “that complacent Reichianalyzed ecstasy that doesn’t mean anything” (200). Jazz is a symbol of authentic American culture and in this setting, the authentic jazz atmosphere of the nightclub is infiltrated by an insincere performer, another image of lost authenticity that leads Sal to realize that the America with which he was once infatuated is now “a muddy boot and no longer a shiny limousine” (141). Going into Mexico, Sal and Dean are able to rediscover authentic culture. Sal portrays Mexico as having “narrow sidewalks crowded with Hongkong-like humanity” (279), a “sweetest and purest and smallest” (298) location containing “pure and ancient activities of human life” (278). It is a place where “all of the human qualities are…still there,” where people “didn’t know that a bomb had come that could…reduce them to jumbles” (299). Here, Sal contrasts the humanity of American and Mexican societies, providing a potential rationale for why America eventually lost its magical quality, the atomic bomb. These descriptions of Mexico provide an image of pure, authentic culture that Sal only finds in rural and pastoral places. Their trip to Mexico allows them to re-experience what they interpret as humanity.


In Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, three Americans, Kit, Port and Tunner leave America to pursue life in Africa. These characters have left the Western world because they feel it has “no character, no ideals, no culture – nothing, nothing” (8). Kit states that “Europe has destroyed the whole world” (88), conveying that these characters go to Africa in search of authentic culture that does not exist anymore in the post-war Western world; to them the American has become a “gorilla-like brute with a fierce frown on his face…and probably an automatic in his hip pocket” (148). This conveys that they leave America to get away from a culture that has lost its sense of a common humanity. Port goes to Africa in search of “reality and true perception…to be found in the conversation of the laboring classes” (15), meaning that he believes truth and actual life exist in rural environments, away from the overdevelopment of American society. These characters have lost faith in America and in the absence of a home, they now go to Africa in an attempt to rediscover the authenticity found within rural society. This idea is accentuated by the fact that Port defines himself as a “traveler,” not a “tourist” (6), meaning that he is making the trip for the purpose of experiencing the authentic; in Africa “the institution of tourist travel” has been “destroyed by the war,” suggesting they can feel authentic because there are no other tourists where they are going. While in Africa, Port and Kit experience instances of authenticity as related to rural society. Port states that he feels “that he was pioneering – he felt more closely identified with his great-grandparents, when he was…out here in the desert than he did sitting at home,” (101) meaning that the African desert has become more authentic to him than his home environment in America. In addition to this, Port wanders around foreign city streets alone, and even attempts to have sex with a blind dancer at one point. These are the types of experiences that enable Port to integrate into the local culture. In the end, Port dies in Africa, which can be interpreted as the most authentic of all experiences, for death is the ultimate end. Going to Africa allows Port to experience the basic modes of human interaction, which is the foundation for a society whose social atmosphere feels authentic.


The characters in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises are all American expats living in Paris. They have left America because they have been emotionally and physically destroyed by the war; Jake, the protagonist, has acquired a “certain injury” (27) from the war that prevents him from having sex, consequently hindering his relationship with the woman he loves, Brett, who “was a V.A.D. in the hospital [he] was in during the war” (38). Now these characters pursue a hedonistic lifestyle away from post-war America. These characters decide to make a trip to Spain, where they, especially Jake, fall in love with the authenticity and humanity of the Spanish culture. Jake states that the Spanish countryside is not “country…as it had been,” but instead “really Spain” (93), meaning that he feels he has experienced something he can say is authentically Spanish. The authenticity of Spain is also conveyed through the motif of bullfighting, particularly when observing one bullfighter named Romero. While other bullfighters are “developing a technique…to give a fake emotional feeling,” Romero maintains “the old thing, the holding of his purity of line.” (168). In this way, Romero is a symbol for the notion of realness Spain provides for Jake. Brett pursues a romantic affair with Romero, perhaps in an effort to become closer to and internalize his authentic qualities. After watching Romero compete in the arena, Jake feels as he “felt once coming home from an out-of-town football game…in the town [he] had lived in all [his] life and it was all new” (192). In this statement, Jake likens the fresh experience of bullfighting to his pastime experience of football, a symbol of authentic American culture, meaning that Spain has replaced America as a source of authenticity for him. Jake is also embraced into the local culture through his admiration for Romero. A local hotel-owner, Montoya, tells Jake that he is different from other foreigners because “he’s a real aficionado” (131), meaning that he has authentic passion for the bull-fights. This is significant because it conveys that Spain is a place of true, real passion and that Jake is able to more or less integrate into this authentic society. Perhaps the America these characters have fled has lost this notion of sincere passion.


The pursuits of the characters within these three novels are successful in that they are able to encounter what they deem as authenticity. What is significant is that they all travel to places more rural than where they begin, conveying that authenticity of the home is lost as places become more developed and forget common humanity. While these characters go to different countries, they maintain a similar idea in retrieving what they have lost coming from post-war American society. When one loses an authentic home, he will go back to the simplest form of human life in an attempt to re-experience authenticity, home, and humanity.
 

The idea of Sal and Dean traveling to different regions of the earth is interesting because as Tuan notes, the concept of region is created by the human experience and partly by imagination, the conclusions our observations jump to. The borders that separate east from west from north from south do not actually clearly exist, but we all still hold a common interpretation about them. Interesting, as Dean and Sal are traveling west, they are experiencing “objects and people,” which is the part of a location that stays in the memory of people. Later, they seem to encounter what Tuan defines as a nation-state trying to maintain the “potency of shared symbols and concepts,” which explains a loss of the authentic experience for which these characters strive. After the identity of the West just becomes a part of a generalized national identity, the solution is to search for experiences in Mexico:

“Now, Sal, we’re leaving everything behind us and entering a new and unknown phase of things. All the years and troubles and kicks – and now this!so that we can safely think of nothing else and just go on ahead with our faces stuck out like this, you see, and understandthe world as, really and genuinely speaking, other Americans haven’t done before us…” (276)

According to Polock, the difficulty with writing about a foreign place is that you cannot write about it authentically; the interpretation is always warped by preconceived notions, “subsequent place is inevitably evaluated in relation to home place.” This is directly related to how Sal talks about Mexico; he romanticizes about the entire experience, but the language he uses to describe Mexico is clearly foreign:

“The mere thought of looking out the window at Mexico – which was now something else in my mind – was like recoiling from some gloriously riddled glittering treasure-box that you’re afraid to look at because of your eyes, they bend inward the riches and the treasures are too much to take all at once. I gulped. I saw streams of gold pouring through the sky and right across the tattered roof of the poor old car…” (285)

 Nearly immediately following this passage, we find the characters in a brothel, where Sal continues to romanticize the experience as one of freedom and brotherhood. But we never see the perspective of the Mexican people, especially the prostitutes themselves for whom the experience surely is not romantic. Going into the Mexican jungle is also significant. As Tuan explains, experiences in the wilderness are what stay in the uppermost consciousness of a person who is originally from the city. These types of experiences become fodder for cultural exchange.

Polock makes the point that place is also decided by people, which is true when Sal goes to Mexico because his romantic interpretation of Mexico is partly influenced by the people that he meets, such as Victor. Part of why these characters love their experience in Mexico is because their memory is able to provide a “permanent impression.” It is not only a factor of place that attracts them to Mexico, but what they did and experienced as a group, the friendship involved, so they naturally become emotionally attached to the location.

When describing Mexico, it seems that Kerouac did not want to create a narrator who actually knew everything about Mexican culture, he instead wanted to demonstrate the point Pocock makes in his essay, that there will always be a degree of ignorance when writing about a foreign place. We can never really escape the mind-frame acquired from the places we are originally from; can Sal and Dean truly integrate into the Mexican “character”? Polock states that home is our identity, it is what defines our character. Perhaps Sal and Dean leave because they really can never escape their American identities.

The first thought that remained with me as I read through this novel was why these youths travel the way they do. After looking at a few passages more closely, it occurred to me that the reason is directly related to the theme of returning to the pastoral, the authentic and primitive way of life. While traveling westward, Sal sees “a lonely crossroads on the edge of a prairie” and notes that it “was beautiful there.” This is an expression of Sal’s desire to return to the basics of life. Similarly, while he makes his way through Des Moines, he befriends a hitchhiker only because he is yearning for “any kind of human friendship.” It seems that Sal is interested not only in a primitive way of life, but also in the close, raw human relationships this way of life creates. This is exactly what his relationship with Dean tries to internalize. In total, the desire to live in absolute freedom with true human relations becomes symbolized by “the ragged promised land, the fantastic end of America."

At some points the reader is led to doubt whether or not the characters are authentic themselves. They are eagerly trying to manifest a lifestyle of the original, but they don’t even “know how to hop a proper chain gang,” do not know “nothing about picking cotton,” and don’t know “how to panhandle.” It appears that they are just contrived “bums” trying to catch on to a certain lifestyle because it appears cool and different. Sal even offers cigarettes at one point because he is trying to create a sense of brotherhood, and perhaps also prove himself more authentically brotherly than Montana Slim, who “never passed the pack.” Sal communicates how disgusted he is with the tourist car he sees while in Davenport, but it is difficult to point out what exactly separates Sal and Dean from the “tourist.” One large difference is the freedom associated with not having a travel itinerary. In a sense they have reached a level of authenticity in their carefree “cowboy” travels because they don’t really know where they are going. This gives us a sense that they are in a position of actual freedom, in which there are “just going.” Unlike tourists, they are dying to not just see, but to experience, like the “old bums and beat cowboys of Larimer Street.” Dean, in a way, becomes a representation of this free American West, as Sal notes that he “had the tremendous energy of a new kind of American saint,” but a significant part of the storyline is how Sal can never truly become the center of Dean’s life as Dean has become the center of his life. Perhaps the statement “We keep on living in hopes of catching it once for all” sums up how complicated their friendship is, and to even say friendship may not be totally accurate as their relationship seems to harbor familial and even romantic qualities. Dean is always leaving Sal, mostly because he wants to pursue many different women, and these relationships he creates parallel the way he cannot stay in one place for too long.

Further along in the novel, Sal observes the fading sense of authenticity everywhere in America, from the white hipster trying in a San Francisco jazz club to the “gorgeous country girl [whose] heart was not glad.” As they get older, America becomes “no longer a shiny limousine” but a “muddy boot.” At the end of the novel, Sal and Dean find true, authentic, “pure” society in Mexico. They relish in the rank smell of the jungle, and the “sweetest and purest and smallest crystal” can be interpreted as a symbol for this authentic lifestyle outside of America they have discovered.

The concept of the spiritual center introduced in Cohen’s essay is interesting because I was able to connect the concept directly to the lives of Port and Kit. They are what Cohen describes as “the striving people who have lost their own center and are unable to lead an authentic life at home to recapture meaning by a vicarious, essentially aesthetic, experience of the authenticity of the life of others.”However, this description is given to the experiential tourist, which does not fit entirely with the character of Port because the experiential tourist does not generate real religious experiences. This idea of a religious center is intriguing because it is not necessarily religious in the normal sense, but refers to a general notion of sacredness, maybe a place that holds answers, the “ultimate meaning” for the individual. This is connected to Port’s reasons for traveling because “for years it had been one of his superstitions that reality and true perception were to be found in the conversation of the laboring classes.” Reality and true perception are interchangeable with the spiritual center. Cohen states that some tourists may think they have “broken through the contrived ‘front’ of the inauthentic, but are only presented with false-backs.” But this doesn’t seem to be case, at least with Kit, as she explores deeper and deeper into a type of primitive authenticity only found at the heart of the community. Her experience becomes authentic, at least at the end of the novel.

Cohen notes that primitive thinking ended when people began to leave their native lands for a romanticized paradise somewhere else. Though Port is not necessarily committed to any spiritual center when he arrives in Africa, he is on a personal “religious quest” back to this primitive way of life. In this way, Port fits the description of the experimental tourist, who lacks “clearly defined priorities and ultimate commitments,” a quality of Port demonstrated through his relationship with Kit. They are experimental tourists because the existential tourist has already converted to a new center, a new origin, and the recreational tourist simply travels for no reason deeper than pure leisure. Port and Kit still have a sense of their origin, a sense of the “nothingness” as Kit puts it, and this is what fuels them to experiment in the centers of other societies. It is almost shocking how Cohen is able to pinpoint the description of the characters in this novel:  they are "aware of what to them looks an irretrievable loss of their center" and "seek to experience vicariously the authentic participation in the center of others, who are as yet less modern"; they manifest the third description of people who look for their spiritual centers in "another society or culture than their own.” The irretrievable loss of Port and Kit’s original spiritual centers are a consequence of the destruction of the war. 

Eric and his mother cannot stress enough how much knowledge they have of the local people there. Although they state that they would never think of living anywhere else, they call Africa uncivilized. This is interesting because it suggests that they are separating themselves from a society that they want to live in, meaning that in their perspective, feeling “at home” does not require a sense of integration. Maybe they just like manifesting a fantasy of living in some sort of constant danger and feeling that they are more capable people because they manage to survive. This type of mentality can be found in Mrs. Lyle’s statement that she has “never met an Arab [she] couldn’t handle.” When Eric first meets Port, he jumps at the opportunity to prove himself more knowledgeable than Port by recalling stories of danger. This also shows how traveling comes at the price of having very few lasting human relations. It appears that the Lyles are in living in a foreign country but they have no desire to integrate: Mrs. Lyle still needs to drink her tea every day and Eric appears socially deprived when meeting Port; they are virtually living in their own world instead of opening themselves to the local culture.

The idea of manifesting a fantasy is connected to the topic of dreams in this novel. The motif of dreaming implies that the characters in this novel want to be able to feel reality, but this is vague because it is unclear what reality really feels like. Perhaps it is a sensation achieved through the travel experience. Kit’s reason for traveling is that she is looking for a place that is still authentic. She feels that the world is gradually being destroyed, that there are too many places with “no character, no beauty, no ideals, no culture – nothing, nothing.” The quotation is interesting because it is difficult to define what authentic culture exactly is. Her main case is that the war has destroyed the world and left it to “nothing.” Maybe though Kit’s eyes, “nothing” is the absence of a general attitude that the world will keep getting better, which was the commonly-held mentality before the war. Dreams can be connected to this because dreams are equivalent to nothing; they do not exist in reality. Perhaps this suggests that Kit’s hope to find a civilization that still has character, beauty, ideals, and culture is just a dream that will never become reality. This is Bowles’ reflection on the consequences of war. Another problem Kit has is that she doesn’t know how to live for herself, or she is in the process of learning how to do this. She is trying to live in either the moment of Port or the moment of Tunner, almost like living in the shadow of another person. Kit feels like she is wasting her life waiting for Port. Another theme of travel comes up with this idea: the idea that one should travel because he or she is wasting her life away not experiencing all there is to experience in the world.

One idea that is prevalent in this novel is the alcoholic lifestyle of the characters. Throughout the entire novel, all of the characters are described as frequent drinkers. They seem to drink constantly in nearly every moment of the novel, and they use this lifestyle to escape any obligations that would be found in a “real life.” This is interesting because it suggests that these are people who want to escape; in this way, the alcohol can be compared to travel: they are both methods of escapism and also methods of running away from reality in general. Especially in the case of Brett, traveling, or never staying in one place, is a lifestyle accentuated by the fact that she cannot stay with one man.

These characters do not have any real goals in their lives; they see their lives in terms of traveling and partying. It appears that the flaws these characters have are ignored as just drunk behavior. Deborah Tall addresses this idea in her essay,"The Where of Writing: Hemingway's Sense of Place." Tall makes the point that “the idea of making a home and attaching oneself to a place, with its inevitable limitations and mundane responsibilities, has no draw; the anonymity of drifting, with its occasional lightning bolts of insight, bespeaks the characters' condition--they are homeless, they are at a loss.” This statement sums up the good and bad sides of wandering from place to place, which we see these characters doing. While they are able to live lives free from many restrictions, their lifestyles are actually filled with a hidden sense of emotional distress because of the fact that they do not have a home.

Another interesting character is Bill, the taxidermist. Bill travels because he sympathizes with the life of staying in one place, like the life a stuffed animal is bound to. Robert Cohn shares this mentality that time is running out and that he needs to see the world before he reaches a point in his life where he cannot move, like the stuffed animals. For Cohn, there is something missing in his life, a void that he believes can be filled through the experience of travel.

A character created to contrast the meaningless lives of these characters is Romero. He is young but he is much more mature than the adults in this novel; Romero is depicted as polite and civilized while Mike tastelessly tries to make fun of him. Romero has already established a title for himself, something that the count says Jack doesn’t have. It almost appears that Romero is a living representation of everything these characters want; they want to internalize these qualities Romero has, which is one reason why Brett falls in love with him. Jake agrees with Montoya at one point that Romero’s career should not be influenced by anything outside of his hometown. This is significant because Jake is a tourist himself, conveying that one thing Romero has that Jake does not have is the sense of belonging in a certain place.

While traveling around Europe with her family, Daisy Miller refuses to conform to any social standards of the places she visits. Daisy Miller seems to have an important statement in mind, but her naivety gets in the way of how she expresses this statement. While in Rome, Daisy develops a bad reputation as she is seen flirting with all sorts of men, one of these men being Giovanelli. We know that Daisy’s relationship with Giovanelli is not based on anything nearly as concrete as love, one reason being because she doesn’t mind whether or not her friend, Winterbourne, intrudes on their dates. Winterbourne refers to Giovanelli as “the little Italian,” (53) and Mrs. Walker thinks of him as a “mysterious Italian,” (44), suggesting that from their point of view, the one significant thing about Giovanelli is the fact that he is foreign. This can be interpreted as the idea of Giovanelli and Daisy together being too foreign a concept to be accepted by society. His character and personality are never really explored in this novella, which conveys that Giovanelli stands as more of a statement than an actual character.

Daisy Miller’s struggle is that she wants freedom from the restrictive culture of her surroundings, and this theme is enhanced by the idea of travel. Choosing to have a debatable relationship with Giovanelli is her way of voicing her radicalism. Another interesting aspect is that Daisy is in Rome, but she refuses to “do as the Romans do,” making it unclear whether she has a personal mission for liberation or is just ignorant and uncultured, as Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Costello believe. This ambiguity is accentuated by Winterbourne’s constant contemplation over whether or not Daisy Miller is an innocent girl.

All of these older women (Mrs. Walker, Mrs. Costello) in the story who are trying to tell Daisy to keep face have it wrong: they think that she is only accompanying Giovanelli because he is handsome and elegant when actually Daisy is with him for a much more significant reason. Her struggle against society is not as superficial as these women think; they do not understand that Daisy is with Giovanelli in an attempt to grasp more personal freedom and largely, to explore. The entire concept of being abroad accentuates this idea of personal exploration. Daisy Miller is able to realize new things that she desires as she comes of age, but she is still too naïve when it comes to how she deals with this exploration. Her methods of achieving freedom may not be plausible, but it is clear that she is not just lusting after foreign men; her desires are based on personal freedom and adventure, which is supplied by travel. Her death at the end signifies that this sense of freedom could not be attained in her world during the period in which she lived. Her death marks a true moment of freedom and fearlessness, and proves Daisy as not a delicate flower as her name would suggest, but a lover of exploration who finally at the end, martyrs herself.
 

I was at the beach, sitting on a shaded ledge and watching the people at the water. Below me were children playing, some holding balloons they had received at a friend’s party. Others were catching small clams in the water, and I wondered where they would go to cook them afterwards. The area was what the pictures in my Lonely Planet travel guide had promised. The water was clear, and the sky was equally clear. There were green mountains to the west and if one was to take a thirty-minute stroll east, he could meet the fields of rice whose neat, structured lines I thought could bring me back to a neat, structured childhood I had never experienced. And in these fields are tiny white spots – egrets that stand motionless until one begins to believe that they are some strange, foreign strand of rice.  

I spotted a group of teenagers – two colorful boys and one colorful girl together riding a surrey bike along the coastline. I continued to sit and watched them for a few minutes. Their colorful clothing momentarily transformed the beach location into a carnival, or better, a foreign comic strip that exploded with fun, something thrilling to watch but impossible to read. They quickly abandoned their surrey bike and raced each other down to the water. I felt my legs move myself closer to the edge of the shaded ledge; I wanted to run with them. I let myself imagine for a few minutes. I saw myself occupying the one empty seat on the surrey bike, racing them down to the water but letting the pretty girl win. Afterwards, I would catch clams with them and one of the boys would invite all of us to his house to steam them, and together we would watch each closed shell gradually surrender and open to reveal a tiny but precious amount of meat.

I watched until they returned and took their surrey bike back from where they had come. I sat on the ledge until the sun went down, when I stood up and followed the same road I had taken to get there. There were a few balloons tied to a tree, abandoned. I thought about the balloons as I walked back to the familiar busy road, and the thought lingered even as I got out of the cab and returned alone to the familiar room I was renting.