"We blew it"...
"American road novels generally devote more romantic attention to the highway and automobile. Yet the automobile bears within it an ambivalence, around whether it frees or imprisons us." (Laderman, p. 9)
Wyatt (aka 'Captain America') and Billy set out at the beginning of the movie on an adventure, using illegally-earned money to seek the freedom and excitement of the road on the way to their ultimate destination: a prime example of hedonistic rebellion against societal order, Mardi Gras. Their adventure seems to be fueled by an underlying desire for some kind of greater enlightenment or sensual/emotional/spiritual awakening than they have experienced within the confines of society. Wyatt discards his watch at the onset of their journey, signifying (according to Laderman) the "urge to move beyond not only social and narrative conventions, but temporal and spatial ones." (Laderman, p. 68) Yet on their journey, they find themselves unable to completely escape the constraints of time, space, and conservative culture - in fact they find themselves dependent on them, to some extent.
The first indication of struggle between freedom and conservative culture occurs immediately, when Billy and Wyatt look for a hotel room to sleep in and yet are rejected by the very "institution" they are attempting to leave behind on their journey. They end up sleeping in nature, in a less comfortable and ideal sleeping situation but with more "freedom". Ironically, they feel safer and more free in the wild than they do where they are not accepted, in the hotel run by a man representing the conservative ideals they are trying to outrun. Later, though, Billy and Wyatt are robbed of this safety in nature, when they are brutally beaten by local rednecks who again reject their free-loving, wild spirit lifestyle. Their freedom is constricted by society. Wyatt, unable to feel as exhilarated about life using drugs as Billy, states somewhat prophetically "We blew it" near the end of the movie. There is no way he could have known that the would both be killed the next day, the ultimate rejection by the closed-minded rural rednecks they have continually encountered - but he felt that their journey was in vain. They presumably squandered a large amount of their drug money on more drugs, alcohol, and sex, and were unable to truly find the elusive freedom from society that they set out in search of.