america, woo.
"As it rewrites the landscape according to the youth and civil rights movements of the time, it seems only to document and embrace a transitional nationalism that attacks the presuppositions of a formerly stable Americanism" (Klinger 182).
Wyatt and Billy's search was not only for America, but it was also for themselves. A search for their identity through what was a life changing journey. I actually feel like they found America in many ways. One way was through the people that they met. They met a family who worked hard to live off of the land. They met young adults who weren't satisfied with their lives in the cities, so they moved together to start a new life. They met social outcasts, and women who were selling their bodies to survive. I feel like all of those things are what make up America. Maybe not the traditional America with our thought on freedom and individuality, maybe not the side of America that they were hoping to find, but a definite part of our society. What they didn't find on this journey was self-worth, their identities. They were still the same people through everything and failed to find that mobility on the open road empowered them. Wyatt and Billy started off as outcasts, and they ended up dead because they were outcasts.