“But it was beautiful kneeling and hiding in that earth. If I felt like resting I did, with my face on the pillow of brown moist earth. Birds sang an accompaniment. I thought I had found my life’s work” (pg. 96).
Throughout Sal’s journey into the West, he seems to have taken great relish in viewing nature and the landscapes around him. The quote here is kind of ironic because working and being refined to a certain place for a period of time definitely does not seem like something Sal would actually like. Moreover, he was not even good at what he was doing and Terry in fact picked the cotton faster than he did! However, Sal might have expressed this desire at the moment because being close to nature represented to him a connection with the route to an extensive amount of space that can be roamed around any way and anytime he wants. The birds singing probably added a sense of joy and freedom to all this. Sal’s perspective of nature at this point might have summed up what he is really after in this whole trip away from home. He really wanted to come out of his narrow and mundane world to experience endless new things and enjoy much more from this life. These new “things” came in the form of riding on a flatboard with a bunch of other hitchhikers, going up the mountain to view the scenery, and having a make-belief family with Terry and Johnny. From all these various intriguing encounters, he searches for what kind of a person he really wants to become in the future.
Sal, at one point, remarks that when he stoops to get into a tent, there was his “baby and [his] baby boy” (pg. 94). He seems to say this with a sort of affection and longing that made me wonder whether he actually wished for a family. From the way that he “carelessly” treats his romantic relationships at times, is Sal any serious at all about love?
While I agree that Sal continuously expresses his literal love for nature so far in the book, I feel that this image of him lying in the "brown earth" is more of a metaphor. Throughout his travels he seems to be "hid[ing] in the earth," which could translate to interacting with all kind of people and becoming part of the human landscape. Throughout his interactions with people and general role of "the observer," it appears that a goal of his travels is to simply get to know the world in which he lives by meeting all kinds of people and getting glimpses of how different people live their lives. However, he hardly stays in one place with the same people for long. Do you think that he continues to move on to new places so often because he doesn't wish to make lasting connections with people?
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