What are the hidden messages in Easy Rider There are many symbols of freedom and individuality in Dennis Hoppers movie Easy Rider. The movie Easy Rider revolves around two bikers, Wyatt and Billy, making a trip from Los Angeles to New Orleans, to attend Mardi Gras. The first scene in the movie involves the two protagonists selling a large amount of cocaine to a gentleman in a Rolls Royce. After the drug deal two the bikers begin their journey to Mardi Gras, but not before Wyatt removes his watch and throws it on the ground. This action is shows Wyatt’s pursuit of freedom, because time serves only to constrain them. Once on the road you learn that their names are Wyatt and Billy, a reference to Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid who are considered American legends, as well as outlaws. Wyatt rides a chopper with the stars and stripes on the gas tank and on his helmet while sporting the now cliché leather jacket. Billy is dressed up like a cowboy; he is wearing all tan leather with a wide brim hat. Also throughout the movie Billy refers to Wyatt as Captain America. All of these things serve to ingrain the belief that they embody the American dream which is to earn enough money to pursue your dream. It just so happens that their dream is freedom, the same belief that led to the creation of the United States. Billy and Wyatt of them go through a series of adventures, first stopping off at a motel where they're rejected, regardless of the glowing vacancy sign. This shows that their culture is not accepted in the rest of the world. They leave the motel and camp out in the wilderness. At a point, Wyatt's bike gets a flat, and they stop at a farm to fix it. It is at this point that the film makes a comparison of the bikers to cowboys. As Wyatt is fixing his tire a man in the background is shoeing his horse. This is making the point that Wyatt is the new version of the cowboy and his chopper is the new cowboy’s horse. During this scene there is an exchange between Wyatt and the farmer where Wyatt tells the farmer how much he admires his farm because he built it with his own hands. This is the first time that you get an idea of Wyatt’s values.
The times are changing and he's unwilling to give up the past. The world is becoming modernized and people like him, cowboys and ranchers, are slowly disappearing. He runs away from home because he desires to find peace within himself as well as a place where he can feel he belongs. Here begins the adventure of John Grady and his best friend Lacey Rawlins. It is important to note here the means of travel. The story is taking place after World War II, a time when cars are fairly common, yet these boys decide to go on horseback, like in the fading old days. This is just another concept of how they are unwilling to give up a fading past. When they first begin their journey, the boys are having a good time. In a sense they?re two buddies on a road trip with no real motive. Rawlins even mentions, ?You know what?I could get used to this life.? Then they meet Blevins, the foil in the plot that veers the two boys of their course and also has plays a role in the lasting change of their personality. Their meeting with him gives an insight into Grady?s character. Rawlins is against letting Blevins come along with them, but because of John?s kind nature he ends up allowing Blevins to come. It?s because of this kindness and sense of morality, he gets into trouble later on.
When David Hayden describes Ollie Young Bear to the reader, he mentions, “All of these accomplishments made Ollie the perfect choice for white people to point to as an example of what Indians could be. My father liked to say of Ollie Young Bear, 'He's a testimony to what hard work will get you" (48). Ollie Young Bear exemplifies the perfection in the imperfect society that humans live in because he had education, religion and a job. This perfection helped display him as the ideal Indian according to the whites. Wesley Hayden believed that Ollie Young Bear’s hard work throughout his life to be as successful as a white was proper and adequate. Wesley’s belief embodies the American ideal and myth that hard work can easily bring success. However, he is shrouded from the obstacles people face through their hard work because he inherited his existence. While Wesley Hayden praised Ollie Young Bear for his accomplishments, Ollie Young Bear also displayed to other Indians that even though he grew up in a condemned community, he was able to reach the success of the white man. The American Identity involves hard work and facing of obstacles to achieve life goals and essentially the American Dream while supporting the idea that all have the ability to
In the life and time of Sam patch as well as other figures from this time all depict America in various way...
At the same time, the author makes clear the harsh realities and disappointments of John Grady’s chosen way of life. When John Grady leaves Texas at the age of 16, he seems to have a plan. He wants to become a cowboy and have a close relationship with nature. John Grady’s character is hopelessly romantic; he takes action without caring about repercussions. In All the Pretty Horses, John Grady falls in love with people or things that are unable to love him back at the same level.
In the movie Wyatt Earp was getting ready to move to California to marry. Then he got word that his brother Virgil was in danger and needed his help with a rowdy bunch of cowboys. Dee Brown said, "Wyatt decided Dodge was too tame for him and at the end of the season he, Doc, and Big-Nose Kate left for Tombstone." His arrival in Arizona with Doc and Kate was already a problem since highly acclaimed Wyatt Earp was riding in with the cold-blooded killer, Doc Holliday. The film portrayed Wyatt's brothers as being very wary of Doc's presence, but they already knew what he had done for Wyatt so they had accepted him as friend, but that did not go for the rest of the town.
When most people were young, he or she would sit by the window and wonder off imagining of what their future would hold. Most people have the same vision called the American Dream. The American Dream is a façade that money is entirety and can make a person feel content. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, that American Dream is portrayed through the character Billy Pilgrim. According to Vonnegut, “He married his fiancée, finished his education, and was set up in Ilium by his father-in-law. Ilium is a particularly good city for optometrists because General Forge and Foundry Company is there. Every employee is required to own a pair of safety glasses, and to wear them in areas where manufacturing is going on” (24). According to society, Billy Pilgrim would be considered a successful individual, for his life was set up for him by family, including a well-paying job and a family. Although the American Dream seems like the perfect life, money truly cannot buy anyone’s happiness. Billy was a prime example of someone who had it all but was still struggling to accept his life as a whole...
Foner, Eric and John A. Garraty. "Freedom Rides." The Reader's Companion to American History. 1 Dec. 1991: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 19 May. 2014. .
Defining the American character is quite difficult because American identity is vaguely founded on shared values and ideologies, more so than a particular creed, race, or culture. In order to describe the American character, we will consider the dominate and distinctive qualities of Americans as interpreted by J. Hector St. Jon De Crèvecoeur and Thomas Paine. First, we will examine how Crèvecoeur illustrates Americans as industrious, prideful, and political in “Letters from an American Farmer.” Then, we will analyze from Thomas Paine's “Common Sense” how he depicts the prevalent qualities of Americans to be driven by justice, liberty, emotions, and individualism. Also, because both authors consider the American character and culture different
Smith Holmes, Marian. "The Freedom Riders, Then and Now" Smithsonian. The Smithsonian Magazine, Feb. 2009. Web. Feb.-Mar. 2014.
McCarthy’s plot is built around a teenage boy, John Grady, who has great passion for a cowboy life. At the age of seventeen he begins to depict himself as a unique individual who is ambitious to fulfill his dream life – the life of free will, under the sun and starlit nights. Unfortunately, his ambition is at odds with the societal etiquettes. He initiates his adventurous life in his homeland when he futilely endeavors to seize his grandfather’s legacy - the ranch. John Grady fails to appreciate a naked truth that, society plays a big role in his life than he could have possibly imagined. His own mother is the first one to strive to dictate his life. “Anyway you’re sixteen years old, you can’t run the ranch…you are being ridiculers. You have to go to school” she said, wiping out any hopes of him owning the ranch (p.15). Undoubtedly Grady is being restrained to explore his dreams, as the world around him intuitively assumes that he ought to tag along the c...
“All the Pretty Horses”, a novel written by Cormac McCarthy tells the tale about a man and his friend travelling the plains of Mexico after leaving their homes in Texas. As the novel’s name alludes to, horses are a central theme in the story as they represent manhood and freedom when John Grady, the protagonist, and his friend Rawlins get thrown in jail. McCarthy’s novel became critically-acclaimed which gained him more recognition, as well as a movie adaptation directed by Billy Bob Thornton. Even though Thornton’s adaption has the basics of the novel’s story it does not appropriately grasps its depth. While Thornton’s version stays faithful to the dialogue from the book’s included scenes it does fall short by having an erratic pace, having
...lity for all” and the fact that you can’t be “whatever you want”. The pursuing of the American dream led our hero to his tragic end.
Billy is not happy to stay behind and tells the elderly couple not to mess with him because he knows they don’t really want to keep him and he knows that he has just been dumped off. The couple
...done so much and lived the “dream” life that portrayed Americanism from a different view than what most other books or movies show it to us as. Doing every little crime they pleased, fulfilling every wish they had ended up in there being nothing more left to do.
The scene in question opens with an image (shot 1 in the storyboard) atypical in a film coded as a Western: two men riding together atop the same horse, as one critic points out, "jogging listlessly in a limbo without perspectives" (Strick, 50). At the heart of the scene is the metaphor central to this opening shot; that of male instability, masculinity in crisis. Coley has given his horse to the Woman With No Name and rides on the back of Gashsade's steed out of necessity. He has given up his means of transport, his agency. Without his horse, Coley lacks mobility in the narrative and his position as a male is challenged. The male body is celebrated in the Western with "the phallic image of a man on horseback, sitting high above the ground, upright and superior, gazing down at a world whose gaze he in turn solicits" (Mitchell, 167).