Holly Golightly's blog

Empty Road in Vermont

There is something calming about driving a car, especially in Vermont. The roads are often empty and surrounded by Mountains. Seeing the road stretching out before you and moving steadily along it becomes hypnotic. The distance and the movement clear your head and allow for reflection. So, while the events that shape this story took place off the road it was while traveling from one place to another that I was able to make sense of them.

“I have to get out of here. There is no way I can bear staying here all summer.”

“I understand, but don’t you think you should consider your options before you just take off to Vermont?”

“No”

“You could work here and you will be with friends.”

“I’m going. It will be fine.”

That was how I decided to pick up and move to Vermont for the summer. Usually I am one of those people who have to make pro and con lists before a decision can even begin to be made. However, in that situation I made up my mind in a day and nothing could have reversed it which is how I ended up making a thirteen hour drive to Vermont.

When you spend that much time alone watching trees, pavement, and cars wiz by, you start to remember a lot of things. I once read somewhere that, “love can lead [to] a woman being lost, and in that lost world perhaps the only thing to do is leave to build a new world.”* And that is exactly what I did. Some part of me had to have known, yet it did not really hit me until I was driving that I was running away. The only reason I was going to Vermont was to escape from my past.

Olde English Chinese Restaurant
When Zhuang arrives in England she is completely alone. She struggles to learn English so she can communicate accurately with others and to understand the cultural differences. Because of these barriers Z feels isolated and she is constantly searching for a companion. Her loneliness depicts the estrangement that travel often causes.

Unlike many of the characters we have read about Z does not travel to find herself or excitement. She travels because her parents want her to in the hope that it will bring them all a better life. She goes to England to learn English, so she can be successful. The prospect of a new place and a new life is not exciting to her. While other characters have viewed unknown places as an opportunity for exploration, Z views England as scary, lonely, and unwelcoming. All she desires is to create a home by finding a man to love her. Her desire for a lover portrays the need we all have for human contact. When in an unfamiliar place it seems only natural that one would reach out to other people. By making connections with other people in the place one can begin to be attached to the place itself.

For Sophie travel is both a looming threat and her greatest happiness. She is constantly worried by the feeling that she must eventually return home. Her ultimate departure from Italy would end the happiness she has found with Tancredi. However, she also cannot settle down in Italy because she always feels like a foreigner. At the same time when she is physically moving she seems to be happiest. Sophie is extremely happy when she is going through the town to meet Tancredi at the train station for their trip to Florence. While driving back from Florence she is also very happy and she does not want the trip to end. She is able to escape the worries of life while traveling. She does not know if she and Tancredi will be as in love the next day, but at that point it does not matter because they are happy in that moment. While the moment continues nothing will change, but when they arrive the moment will be over.

Venice
The Comfort of Strangers is similar to Death in Venice since the main characters of both novellas go to a foreign city to rekindle an interest in life. In Death in Venice, Aschenbach is weary of his rational, sedate life devoted to his writing. Colin and Mary seem to be hoping that their travels will bring back the passion they used to share. They all look to Venice with its mysterious winding streets as a place to find what they are missing in life. When he arrives in Venice, Aschenbach sees a fairy tale city, mystery, and debauchery. Yet despite finding this, he is unable to discover what he needs to rejuvenate himself. When the weather does not impress him he is at first quite willing to depart from the city. While staying in the unnamed city, assumed to be Venice, Colin and Mary experience the narrow, winding streets as confusing, mysterious, and disorienting. However, they too are unable to locate what they were hoping would allow them to revive their now passionless relationship.

It ends up being a person in both novellas that allows the main characters to renew their lives. Aschenbach finds inspiration for his writing and a new excitement once he sees Tadzio. For Colin and Mary, meeting Robert is the event which allows them to become close again. While Aschenbach was infatuated with beauty, Colin and Mary seemed to gain intimacy from a shared fear of Robert. Sharing the strange and intense experience of going out with him, spending the night in the street, and staying at his house brought them together. There were then able to talk extensively and be intimate with each other as they had not been in years.

Venice
When the reader is first introduced to the protagonist, Gustav Aschenbach, he is depicted as a serious older man devoted to his art. He does not have time for relaxation or frivolous pursuits. In fact he goes as far as to say that leisure makes him uneasy and restless. Yet when he goes to Venice he is influenced by his surroundings. Venice represents a fairy tale city and a sense of debauchery to Aschenbach. While there he begins to relinquish his pervious outlook on life and allows himself to become obsessed with Tadzio. He spends all of his time sitting and watching Tadzio or following the boy and his sisters around Venice. Previously he would have worked industriously on his art rather than wasting his time.

He goes as far as dyeing his hair and applying makeup to appear younger. Ironically making him like the older man he criticizes, for posing as a young man, on the boat to Venice. The city seems to make Aschenbach lose all sense of logic, so that he does not even choose to leave after being informed that there is an outbreak of cholera. He is so detached from reality that he decides to continue his new life of leisure and obsession with Tadzio even though it leads to his death.

Mosquito Coast
In The Mosquito Coast, Allie is disillusioned and disgusted with American society, so he removes himself and his family from it. He travels to Honduras in search of a better life and a new center. He seems to be on a search for something more authentic than the consumerism he loathes in America. In this way, he is like Port and Kit in The Sheltering Sky. They are alienated from post-war American society and travel to Africa in hopes of finding a more authentic life. Just as Port seems to believe that he is superior to most Americans who venture to other countries because they are tourists and he is a traveler, Allie believes his willingness to travel to an unknown place makes him better. He thinks that everyone should be willing to give up the life they have in America in favor of one away from the evils of capitalism and greed.

Allie is very closed minded in his view of America. He seems unable to except that some pieces of American society may be good. Yet at the same time, he seems bent on bringing civilization and modernization to Honduras. He is similar to the colonists in Heart of Darkness, who are determined to improve Africa. However, his reasons for going to Honduras and “improving” conditions there seem less about generating wealth and more about a personal cause. It is ironic though that he goes to create an anti-American paradise, but he brings with him inventions from America and tries to make his new home more suitable for human inhabitants.

In Heart of Darkness, Marlow travels because he is drawn to explore new places. As a child he used to look at maps pick out “blank spaces on the earth” that seemed “particularly inviting” to him. Although he is technically in the Congo to work what he really cares about is taking in the experience of the foreign place. In this way he is similar to Sal in On the Road and Kit and Port in Sheltering Sky. Yet as he travels he is less exposed to the authentic culture of the area and more to the evil created by imperialism. It would be impossible for Marlow to obtain authenticity during his trip while remaining with the trading company. Since the “pilgrims” are worse than even the most obvious tourist. They enter the Congo with the intention of making it as much like Europe as they can for the time that they need to be there. In the process they obliterate the culture and destroy the landscape. So, Marlow’s journey becomes more about understanding human nature. The further he travels into the heart of Africa the greater the effects of greed and isolation on men. At first he sees the effects in the dying natives in the shade and the waste land that the station has created. The further he moves inland the more the evil is apparent in the individual people. Kurtz is the ultimate representation, he tries to become one with the jungle but he cannot escape the violence and destruction that he and others have caused.

In The Sun Also Rises and On The Road Jake Barnes and Sal Paradise both choose to leave the society that was originally their home, or as Erik Cohn puts it, their “center.” They embark on journeys because they feel alienated from their societies and believe they will find authenticity among the fellahin. Both Jake and Sal begin traveling to find these people who understand life and therefore truly live. Once they have located their respective fellahins they attempt to become intimate with the members so they can understand and live life the way these people do. However, to locate these people Jake and Sal have led quite abnormal lives, so they have not really found authenticity at all.

open road
While reading On the Road I have been continuously amazed by Sal’s absence of aim in his travels. He has a final destination but is willing to take his time getting there and has no real reason for going except to go. At points I find this lack of reason annoying, but it is also rather enticing. I cannot imagine having the guts to just take off across the country. Today it seems like you must have a reason for everything you do and a plan of how you will make it happen.

Bus In Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, Port explores the reasons that people travel. While on the bus from Boussif to Aϊn Krorfa it occurs to Port that it is “often on trips that he thought most clearly.” It is interesting to consider that maybe rather than for the sights or the exposure it is for clarity that people leave home. It is in many ways logical though, when one is away from a situation it is much easier to put things in to perspective. Similarly to how Hemingway found he could only write about Paris or Spain when he was no longer there. There is something about being away from everything familiar that makes reflection much easier. I suppose it is because most of the small worries of one’s everyday life are left behind therefore the things that one can still contemplate are logically the larger troubles of one’s life. In The Sun Also Rises it seemed that many of the characters were using travel as a means of escape, but Port suggests that travel could be used as a means to an end. In his case the end is finding the clarity to make “the decisions he could not have reached when he was stationary.” Yet if one must journey in order to be able to reflect on a situation then maybe one is in a way fleeing after all. Then the question becomes is it acceptable to run in order to obtain a new perspective on a situation.