Thursday, December 6, 2012

Chapters 5-8

Nobody is ready for this traveling group of "white crazies" going across the United States popping more speed, acid and smoking more grass than ever imaginable.  What Kesey and his group are doing can be considered revolutionary or ground breaking, like freedom fighters on a mission.  Or they can be considered crazy lunatics who do not belong in a "normal" society.  Kesey, Cassidy, Paula, and the rest of the group are all sick of the ordinary.  Their sick of living up to everyones expectations, they want to show the world what their made of.

Kesey said he's sick of what is expected of a human being growing up.  He says, "The youth had always had only three options: go to school, get a job or live at home... And how boring that was!" He compares this given perception on the youth versus his perception living the experience of the infinite.  Instead of principles learned through school and society why not live by the principles of me & us.  In society we are expected to get a job at some point in our live, in order to live, in order to provide for ourselves and sometimes others.  Kesey wants to prove that they do not need jobs to survive.  Living in and out of buses, gas stations, and hostels may be a tough experience but it is an adventurous one, and it can be done, the Merry Pranksters prove it.

One of the most interesting connections I have made in this book so far is that the buses name they use to travel across the U.S to the New York World's fair is named "furthur."  When I read the name furthur I thought it was interesting because there is a jam band, created by two of the members of the Grateful Dead named Furthur.  The Grateful Dead were associated with the Merry Pranksters and I thought it was interesting that two of their members titled their new band Furthur.  I'm wondering if they got the name from this book.

This book is really good so far, I like reading about the interesting acid trips that they are having, like when Zonker's whole world turned orange, and all the black people dancing around the bus were all orange.  Then when he came down from his trip everything turned brown.  I also appreciated the use of the character "Stark Naked," which was her movie name.  After she ran off the bus everyone came to realize that nobody even knew her.  Living this lifestyle this tends to happen, you run into people you don't know when you are on drugs and sooner or later you are traveling across the country with a naked lady that sits crouched in the corner staring into nothing.  This book defines the typical drug user of the 60's, outsider are not these people are very interesting to read about.    

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