Quest for America
"[...]The scene sketches how their bikes are a part of the two riders (they never get off their bikes, their motors still running), but also how the bikes symbolize something "different" and threatening for mainstream America" (p. 69, Driving Visions).
While the tag line of the film states, "A man went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere," I think Wyatt and Billy found America, but it wasn't quite the America that they expected to find.
Beginning with Wyatt himself, he symbolized the duality of his quest: a yearning for a degree of mobility while having a degree of acceptance of the primacy of the mainstream lifestyle. With his American flag bike and jacket, Wyatt is decked out as 'Captain America' -- symbolizing both a certain acceptance of the free Capitalist market (having just made lots of money through a drug deal & the money being stored in the tank painted like the flag) and the freedom of rebellion against the more conservative facets of society (being able to take to an open road and not be held down by the clock -- shown by the tossing of Wyatt's watch).
The scene at the motel, where Billy and Wyatt are rejected and forced to camp out instead of getting a room depicts the conservative America's unwillingness to accept anyone or anything that does not conform -- their money is just as good as anyone else's, but it is refused because they are 'too different'. This rejection due to difference is a long-standing American tradition that is still present today (see the treatment of anyone of middle-eastern background).
In the sequence at the farm, Wyatt appears to be appreciative of the lifestyle of the farmer, who, while stationary (verse roaming like Wyatt), lives off the land and does his own thing at his own pace (symbolizing a certain harmony with both life and the land). However, even in this seemingly idyllic lifestyle, there is yearning -- the farmer wishes for mobility and more money.
Jumping forward to the camp scene with the ill-fated and prophetic George, he states how America used to be a good country and that people are scared of what Wyatt and Billy represent (freedom), but that people don't realize that they aren't really free and will kill to preserve their illusion of freedom. This sums up the quest for America in just a few sentences -- a people who are seemingly free, but who are also slaves to the capitalist and mainstream system; who yearn for difference and mobility, but are static and complacent. So, George is both complimentary and critical of America -- that we have the potential and possibility to be free, but we are too caught up in the mainstream lifestyle to fully embrace what that for which we yearn.
This view, however, is framed by white masculinities, as the ability to shrug off the mainstream capitalist view and embrace the freedom of difference and mobility was a luxury that could only be afforded to the members of the dominant culture. At this point in American history, neither racial minorities nor women (en masse) could have afforded to turn their backs on mainstream culture, as they had yet to be embraced by mainstream culture to begin with -- one cannot make a conscious effort to turn one's back on something if one wasn't accepted in the first place. Therefore, for the era in which the film was made, the film's overall message (embracing of true freedom) could only have come from the perspective of a white male.