straight story
so during a "seriously? Lynch directed this?" moment i went to wikipedia and found out it's based on a true story. not that that's relevant at all, but i thought it was neat. well. it's kind of relevant in that it wasnt a creative decision for the writer to make it a narrative in which our protagonist technically leaves nothing behind, it was just factual. but for the purposes of the class I can ignore that.
anyway. I guess you could say that by staying within the area instead of escaping it, he roams his own inner workings, whereas in our other films the protagonists journey away and gain from their experience with others. If we were experiencing this movie from the prospective from say, the pregnant teenager in the film, I think it would fit right in with the other films we've watched. when Alvin speaks to the other characters, I dont think he's realizing all these things, I think he's coming to terms with the things he already knows. He has nothing to prove, nothing to run away from, and he's just chock full of that old man wisdom. So while he's dishing it out he reflects on it in the context of his present situation and learns from himself.