Forest Drive-By

For me, the defining part of the film comes when George Hanson is killed when the trio is asleep in the forest. Up until this part in the film, the main characters get from one destination to another with few bumps in the road--at least not major ones. The whole film until this point is very easy-going. Even when Billy and Wyatt wind up in jail, which one would normally find a terrible place to wind up, they soon meet George and soon after are allowed to leave. When George is killed, it illustrates just how much other people truly detest counterculturals such as Wyatt and Billy. This notion is illustrated in the diner scene prior, but one would never guess that those citizens would go so far as to commit murder. George's death also foreshadows the ending of the film, where Billy and Wyatt are shot, leaving them either dead or seriously wounded. After witnessing George's death, viewers fully understand how tense the world is at the time of the counterculture movement.