America the Ugly
Two men went out searching for America and couldn't find it anywhere. America the beautiful, the land of the free and home of the brave. This is not what these two men found on their journey. They found an ugly America, where they experienced violence, discrimination and what seemed like no freedom at all. These are not the things we want to/or think to attribute to a "free country."
"The 'search for America'...is not geographical, it is literally a quest to find out where America's head is at. The people and places represented in that quest are evocative of different states of conciousness co-existing unpeacefully in this country and all over the world. Each stop on the road is an encounter with a different awareness of what is real and what is of value" (Klinger 181).
This movie depicted "where America's head was at" in the late 1960's. When Wyatt and Billy were in the southern town, they were highly discriminated by the "dominant culture" because they were part of the counter-culture. They had long hair and dressed differently, and for that reason they were not served at a local diner, and experienced extreme violence which lead to the death of George. These men were not experiencing the American Dream, they were having a difficult time surviving because of their treatment by other groups of people who did not share their same exact views on life. They did nothing to deserve this treatment and this type of discrimination was happening to many different races, ethnic groups, religious groups etc, at this time. They did not find America, because America was not what they had imagined it would be. America's cultures were not all beautiful, and they were not free.