St Samuel Danger Lincoln Prentice Rounds IV's blog

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. The whole truck seemed to lift into the air and violently come crashing down as it passed over each freeway extension. Bang. Bang. Bang. Ignoring the pleas of the 22-year-old suspension to slow down, the man in the driver’s seat remained dead still. His stone-like face, at this point in the journey dirty and unshaven, let loose no hint of emotion, and his ice blue eyes continued to follow the darting white lines as they had for the past 500 miles. Only someone who truly knew this man would have been able to catch a glimpse of happiness, to see brief respite that this particularly rough stretch of Interstate 64 had brought him. But alas, there was nobody, and there had never been anybody for that matter, who truly knew this man.

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In reality, the cross-country journey of this bedraggled, blue-eyed man began back when he was not yet bedraggled or a man, but rather a boy still very much full of life and very blue-eyed. More specifically, it was a warm April morning, the likes of which are pretty rare in the small western Massachusetts town that the boy called home.

That morning was a Saturday, the one day of the week that his father did not have to work. His father ran a car rental service out of an old garage in Boston, and the long hours and grueling commute left him with little time or energy to devote towards his children. So, as the oldest child of six, the boy, at the time only sixteen and in his second year at the local high school, was in charge of looking after his brothers and sisters, all of whom had become extremely close after their mother had left in the middle of the night for Hawaii with her doctor only a couple of years before.

In A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, the main character Zhuang, aka Z, documents her journey out of communist China and into Western culture through a diary set up like a dictionary. Each entry begins with a new word, and then proceeds to illustrate important experiences that she has in her new surroundings.

In many ways, the experience detailed by Z in the story felt familiar to me. Her journey from China and into Europe presents a huge cultural transition, but at the same time it is very similar from the journey that all of us have taken in deciding to attend NYU, and more importantly, to live smack in the middle of Manhattan.

For me, coming to New York City presented me with a radically different set of cultural ideals than from where I came from. New York obviously is much busier and full of more people than suburban Boston, and everything moves at a much faster pace. Furthermore, the buildings, the streets, the traffic – pretty much everything around me operates on a much larger scale here in New York City. In addition, in Boston people you on the street are much friendlier and outgoing, and it is not uncommon to strike up conversation with random strangers about the weather, the Sox, or construction. All of these factors lend me to occasionally feeling small and unimportant, an emotion echoed by Z in the story.

“You must show them the fountain”

To a mere passive observer, this statement, made by the main character Gabriella, would appear to contain no particularly significance to the general theme of travel. But it is important to note, however, that this class has helped craft me into someone who thinks critically about travel and its themes. As a result, the significance of author Shirley Hazzard’s use of a fountain in the opening sentence, and their general reoccurrence throughout the story, did not escape me. Because while fountains may seem like little more than fancy displays of water, there are a number of reasons why they are a very important part of travel.

For one, fountains are everywhere. They exist in the public squares and gardens of likely every country in the world, yet it is nearly impossible to trace the origin of fountains. Wikipedia.com suggests that there is no consensus as to whether they were first created in India, or in Persia, or in Rome. Yet despite the lack of one true point of origin, fountains have still completely assimilated our cities worldwide. This presents an example of something rarely seen in travel: a combination of eastern, middle-eastern, and western design that still manages to be present universally. Normally in our discussions of travel, we refer to western influences on global culture, or vice-versa. In other words, what makes fountains notable to travel is that you can see them in nearly any part of the world you are visiting, and in doing so you are experiencing on of the few examples of a truly global cultural item.

I guess the best way to begin my blog post would be to explain how deeply engrossed I was throughout the entirety of The Comfort of Strangers. From the time that I opened the book earlier this evening, I closed it only once, and that was to get dinner. I thought the story was extremely well written, and the author was able to perfectly able to set up the relationship between Colin and Mary so that I liked them and even felt a level of attachment, yet was still intrigued to eagerly witness their demise.

But what made this book even more interesting was that it calls into question the very emotion around which we often fortify our very existence: love. In the story, Robert serves in some way as the catalyst in driving Colin and Mary into a state where they are physically, emotionally, and sexually inseparable from each other. Even though they relish in this renewed passion, they are subconsciously driven to return to Robert and Caroline, despite obvious signs that it is not a good idea, a decision that ultimately pans out rather poorly for the young couple.

Although the circumstances are much different, the tale of return shares much in common with the story of a typical traveler. Despite the fact that all might be well in their life, there is in inevitable drive inside most of us to leave behind what we know, and to experience and explore that which we do not. Much like how Mary and Colin are motivated by the question “Why?” to follow through the plans of Robert and Caroline, many a person has been motivated to travel by the desire of the unknown, by the wanderlust that, like the motivations of Mary and Colin, are impossible to truly grasp and understand.

The Greek God Eros

Death in Venice begins as a story told with a universally grim and pessimistic tone. The main character Aschenbach has startling visions of a man with scary teeth, and the author notably pays attention to things such as shadows and Aschenbach’s history of poor mental and physical wellness. But the tone changes dramatically when the main character begins to encounter a young Polish boy named Tadzio. The impression that the boy has upon Aschenbach is dramatic, where the narrator explains that Aschenbach is “startled by the truly godlike beauty of this mortal being” (52).

But Aschenbach’s infatuation with the boy does not end there. He proceeds to compare the boy to Eros, whom Wikipedia identifies as the “primordial god of lust, love, and intercourse” in Greek mythology. Considering this is a boy “of about fourteen” (45), his obsession is more than a little unsettling, despite his trying to convince himself that his interest is purely artistic. This unease is only amplified as Aschenbach proceeds to obsess about and to stalk the poor boy and his family.

In the book Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux, main character Allie Fox expresses an extreme distaste with the state of establishment in the United States. In fact, he is so against the government, culture, social hierarchy and other systems in place that he constantly complains, keeps his kids out of school, and goes so far as to start his own utopian society in Honduras. This is a much different tale from the majority of those that Miller.

Looking all the way back to the beginning of the semester, the character Winterbourne from Daisy Miller by Henry James could serve as the polar opposite of Allie. While Allie is completely at odds with the established society of America, Winterbourne embraces the structure of western culture and the specific requirements of being labeled a “gentleman”. He constantly strives to fit into his surroundings, whereas Allie is constantly trying to escape and impose his ideas upon others. Similarly, Winterbourne attempts to integrate Daisy Miller into the European social hierarchy, while Allie tries to minimize the role of America upon his family.

If an impartial third party were to visit Earth and to evaluate the history of white colonization, they would likely reach a very strong conclusion about its purpose and goals in our past. We usually assume that the primary motivations behind colonialism stemmed from various European nations attempting to establish trade in far-away parts of the world, areas rich in natural resources and goods that didn’t exist in Europe. Webster’s Dictionary even defines the word Colonialism as this; “the policy or practice of acquiring control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically”.

Over the course of our first half-semester exploration of travel, our class has spent a lot of time reading and evaluating the travel stories of numerous people, both fiction and non-fiction. We have witnessed events ranging from desert caravans and hitchhiking to bullfights and judgmental 19th century Europeans. During this time we have spent a lot of time exploring the role of the tourist, and what motivates him to leave his home and go out into the world.

But what is a tourist? In his essay entitled A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences, author Erik Cohen defines tourists as merely “travelers for pleasures” (179). While he acknowledges that this description is extremely rudimentary, he uses this as a baseline to describe the various different experiences that can be had when traveling for pleasure, as opposed to traveling out of necessity. In doing so, Cohen offers a very intriguing look into the travel, but one that is generalized to cover nearly everyone that travels.

In Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road, main character Sal Paradise travels all over the country, both by hitchhiking and riding busses. Living in a day and age where cross-country travel is done almost exclusively by airplane, it is hard to imagine the magnitude of his travels, and the time spent on the road. But what many people may not realize is that such travel was an extremely new luxury for Americans. Interstate highways such as the “shining Route 6” had only just been brought to life during the timeframe of this story, in the mid 1950’s.

Fez, MoroccoPretty early on in the story, Port comes into contact with fellow American Eric Lyle, and his mother Mrs. Lyle. One of the first things that they seek to establish is their status as “travelers” rather than “tourists”. With references to their length of stay in Africa, it becomes apparent that the characters of the book differentiate travelers from tourists by the length of time that they remain away from home, and the lack of a desire to return there.
I, on the other hand, would be forced to categorize them as tourists, as a result of their attitude and behavior. Rather than embrace or attempt to at least experience the local culture of northern Africa, the Lyles are quick to isolate themselves. They stay exclusively in hotels, drive from place to place in their fancy automobile, and demonstrate an almost absolute disregard for ideals and standards of the native people that they see. To me a traveler is someone willing to embrace his or her surroundings in a foreign locale, in order to fully experience the places through which they journey.