46 pages • 1 hour read
William Least Heat-MoonBlue Highways: A Journey into America
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Fate
Much of Heat-Moon’s wandering is unintended, and he often drifts freely. The only real guiding intentions are his desire to visit places with odd or interesting names, and his aversion to the interstate system. The rest is random—but on several occasions, Heat-Moon questions that randomness. The best example is early in the book when he visits William Trogdon’s gravesite. Multiple times, Heat-Moon implies that something unseen is guiding him there, and he mentions that “[c]ommon sense said to turn back, but the old sense in the blood was stronger” (48).
While Heat-Moon does not directly name such moments as fate, the suggestion is clear. At another point in the same chapter, Heat-Moon notices “a herring gull, a glare of feathers, put a wingtip a few feet to the left of Ghost Dancing, and, wings steady, accompanied me across” (54). Heat-Moon is cautious to call the gull anything more than what it is, but the context of this image illustrates that Heat-Moon is open to the idea of signs and omens, and he sometimes interprets natural events as though they were cosmically ordained.
Symbol of Emergence
The Hopi symbol is important enough that Heat-Moon includes its illustration so the reader needn’t only imagine it. His definition of the symbol—that it is “a kind of map of the wandering soul” (185)—reveals the symbol’s connection with Heat-Moon’s state of mind as he journeys the country; his expedition itself is a process of the wandering soul.
To the Hopi, the concept of emergence has broader implications and a much more substantive explanation. It is a spiritual progression of humankind and involves four stages. In the final stage, “life is difficult for mankind and he struggles to remember his source because materialism and selfishness block a greater vision” (185). This is a clear connection between the Hopi concept and Heat-Moon’s own views of the world, especially in how the concept considers materialism an obstacle to understanding.
At the end of the book, Heat-Moon shows a picture of the route he traced around the United States. While it does not perfectly replicate the Hopi symbol, its essential course—leaving and returning to a central place—bears some resemblance. In some ways, Heat-Moon’s trip is an enactment of the Hopi concept.
The Palouse
An important symbol of transformation and change in the book, the Palouse is an actual geologic feature in the American Northwest. Heat-Moon’s friend Fred Tomlins calls it a “strange piece of land” (249), then provides a fuller geological explanation describing layers of soil on top of volcanic rock. To Tomlins, it is something of an anomaly: “It’s weird isn’t it? Glacier dust over Lava” (250). In addition to the fire-and-ice contrast, the layering of the soil over the volcanic rock is significant.
Among the text’s primary focuses is transformation’s occurrence over time. The Palouse is evidence that change is constant, even on a vast geological scale. The layering of the different soils is a significant metaphor in the book. For example, Heat-Moon’s route often follows historically significant trails and paths. The Natchez Trace Parkway follows the Natchez Trace, which was first a herd path created by bison, then was used by Native tribes, and is now driven by modern vehicles. Metaphorically, the path’s original history is covered and requires excavation before one learns its significance of the route—much as scientists would determine the soil composition of the Palouse.
The Palouse symbolizes progression from historical origins, not obliteration of them. As Heat-Moon travels, he sees variations on this kind of progression. When he arrives in the Northeast, for example, there is Woodstock in Vermont and Melvin Village in New Hampshire. However, he also sees obliteration of history—such as how the Choctaw village was entirely displaced and destroyed.
Blue Highways
Intentionally driving old state routes is an important motif in the book. These “blue highways” earn their moniker by their color in the road atlas. Early in his adventure, Heat-Moon says, “life doesn’t happen on the interstate; it’s against the law” (9). The remark shows Heat-Moon’s disdain for the modern highway system—but it also suggests that the way to see life is to get off the main road. Heat-Moon’s strict adherence to blue highways recalls Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” where the speaker similarly takes the “less traveled” road.
In the book’s prelude, a short paragraph entitled “Blue Highways,” Heat-Moon declares that these are places “where a man can lose himself” (1). The prelude also creates a mystique of these highways and uses the term both as a literal description and a metaphor. For example, the author names Texas SR 21 as Blue Highway 21 in Texas. When he alludes to the blue highways in a figurative sense, it is an analogy for drifting off the main, or a kind of mental wandering. While driving through the Upper Midwest, Heat-Moon states that “if I were going off on some blue highway of the mind, I should have pulled over” (216). The blue highway thus represents thoughts adrift and off-course.
