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There is a whole mystical objectification of these people that's going on,
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that's allied to the religious strains of this novel,
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which I'm going to pick up again a little bit later on in my lecture today.
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So, this is a more complex and, sort of, dense example of
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how that consumer, that push to consume,
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that consumer sense drives and motivates the novel
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and plays out in what they see when they are on the road.
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In that passage that I read to you when they're in the mountains in Colorado
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drunk, yelling,
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they call themselves "mad, drunken Americans."
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Well, what does America mean in this novel?
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And what does it mean to be an American in this novel?