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Tramping: Alternatives to Traditional American Rites Of TRAMPING: ALTERNATIVES TO TRADITIONAL AMERICAN RITES OF PASSAGE by Anthony Vincent Saturno A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL December 2013 TRAMPING: ALTERNATIVES TO TRADITIONAL AMERICAN RITES OF PASSAGE by Anthony Vincent Saturno This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Susan Love Brown, Department of Anthropology, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: ~/ d" t --- Michael Harris, Ph.D. gy Heather Coltman, DMA I 1 Dean, College of and Letters ~- ii ABSTRACT Author: Anthony Saturno Title: Tramping: Alternatives to Traditional American Rites of Passage Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Susan Love Brown Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2013 In America today, adolescent boys do not have a structured, ritualized or guided Passage from boyhood into manhood. Many young men feel unsure of their manhood even at an age that signifies the transition. This causes young males to need a self-created rite of Passage. Tramping, the act of travelling by train, hitchhiking or foot, is one way in which young males can indePendently achieve manhood. This is a literary account of the lives of Jack Kerouac, Chris McCandless, and Zebu Recchia. Their personal stories allow a detailed view of the advantages and disadvantages found in a self-created rite of passage. While two of the accounts are successful, in Chris McCandless’s case the rite ends in a transition to death. Tramping as a rite of Passage to adulthood seems effective but the danger in self- creation appears to be the lack of guidance that comes in unstructured rites of passage. iii TRAMPING: ALTERNATIVES TO TRADITIONAL AMERICAN RITES OF PASSAGE Statement of the Problem………………………………………...…………………………………………...1 Rites of Passage and the American Male……………………………………………..…………………8 SeParation………………………………………………………………………………………………10 Liminality………………………………………………………………………………………………..11 Reaggregation…………………………………………………………………………………………16 Rites of Passage for Adolescences in America…………………………………………...17 Tramping as an American Alternative Rite of Passage……………………………….22 On the Road: Jack Kerouac as Sal Paradise…………………….…………………………………….30 SeParation………………………………………………………………………………………………37 Liminality………………………………………………………………………………………………..39 Reaggregation…………………………………………………………………………………………54 Chris McCandless: A Transition from Adolescence to Death……………...………………….58 SeParation………………………………………………………………………………………………65 Liminality………………………………………………………………………………………………..66 Reaggregation…………………………………………………………………………………………95 Zebu Recchia: As Eddy Joe Cotton Riding the Rails……….……………………………………...97 SeParation………………………………………………………………………………………….…100 Liminality……………………………………………………………………………………………...104 Reaggregation……………………………………………………………………………………….117 iv Three Rites of Passage, Three Liminalities………………………………………………………...123 ApPendices………………………………………………………………………………………………………130 References……………………………………………………………………………………………………….149 v CHAPTER ONE STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM A rite of Passage is the completion of a journey from one life point to the next. Rites of passage tyPically mark events such as birth, adulthood, marriage, giving birth and death, but are not limited to these events. They are “a category of rituals that mark the Passages of an individual through the life cycle, from one stage to another over time, from one role or social Position to another integrating the human and cultural experiences with biological destiny” (Myerhoff 1982: 103). They are tyPically well marked and structured and deePly symbolic in ceremony and ritual. Rites of Passage tend to be more celebrated, marked and structured in areas that have not reached high levels of modernization but still occur and are necessary in all communities. “There is every reason to believe that rites of passage are as important now as they have always been for our social and Psychological well-being. Indeed given the fragmented, confusing, complex, and disorderly nature of modern experience perhaPs they are more important to orient and motivate us in the Predictable and unique life crises that Present themselves” (Myerhoff 1982: 129). In America for boys trying to reach manhood, rites of Passage become self-created and tramping becomes one such pathway taken to achieve this goal. This study will review literary accounts of three tramps from seParation, into the liminal stage and the Possibility of reaggregation in the end. Jack Kerouac wrote 1 On the Road (1988) about a fictional character named Sal Paradise and his best friend Dead Moriarty. Although this book is found under the fiction genre it is actually a true account of Part of Kerouac’s time hitchhiking across the country. Jon Krakauer wrote Into the Wild (1996), which was a journalistic account of the life of Chris “Alex SuPertramp” McCandless and his time hitchhiking and rail riding across the country leading to his tragic death in Alaska. Finally, Zebu “Eddy Joe Cotton” Recchia wrote Hobo: A Young Man’s Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in the United States (2002) an autobiograPhical account of some of his travels as a tramp. These three accounts were chosen over numerous other accounts available because they are all factual accounts of American adolescents who traverse in very different yet incredibly similar ways through the liminal stage on to another life marker. The three young men come from very different backgrounds and have different motivating factors and very different exPeriences, yet the undertones to all three stories have a lot of similarities. These similarities are what link the three men in the commonality of being in the liminal stage. The stories told in these three accounts show the separation and reaggregation of the tramps, either reaggregation back into the community or, in Christopher McCandless’s case, reaggregation into another rite of Passage: death. The most important feature of these stories is an in-dePth look at how liminality works and the Parallels tramping draws on our overall knowledge of the liminal stage. This thesis’s PurPose is to show the impact of liminality and the features of the liminal world. 2 “Rites of Passage are found in all societies, but tend to reach their maximal expression in small-scale relatively stable and cyclical societies, where change is bound uP with biological and meteorological rhythms and recurrences rather than with technological innovations” (Turner 1967: 93). “They thrive in small scale societies and decay or die in large scale ones” (Grimes 1995: 11). When rites of Passage become “unstructured” as haPPens in many modernized societies it becomes more difficult for initiates to go through certain rites of Passage and the length of time one sPends within the rite tends to become Prolonged. Within a rite of Passage, Arnold Van GenneP (1960) defines three distinct Points: seParation, liminality and reaggregation in which any neoPhyte must Pass to completion in order to ascend to the next life marker. Victor Turner (1969) goes on to really detail and completely define the liminal stage and its importance to any rite of Passage. “Adolescence is a journey, a search for self in every dimension of being. It is a bout dreams, fears, and hoPes as much as it is about hormones, SAT scores and fashion” (Hersch 1999: 17). The rite of Passage known as initiation, the time between adolescence and adulthood where a child becomes a functioning member of the community, is considered to be one of the most Perilous rites that a Person will go through in their life. For adolescent boys it is a time where they are guided by the men of their community and shown what it takes to carry out the tasks that men are required to do. Entry into adult life involves the realization of social obligations and the assumption of resPonsibility for meeting them. What initiation 3 does is to set a time on the way to manhood and by bringing the Person into formal and exPlicit relation with his kindred, confronts him with some of his basic social ties, reaffirms them and thus makes Potent to him his strains against the days when he will have to adopt them in earnest. [RaPhael 1988: 197] In modernized societies this guidance is largely absent and it becomes unclear what it takes to be a man and when the transition to manhood occurs. Left unguided the adolescent boy who is attempting to become a man must create or attempt to create one's own rite of passage. This tends to Prolong the amount of time before an adolescent enters the liminal stage and also delays reaggregation and can make the entire rite of Passage more dangerous. In the United States there is a high value on individualism and Personal freedom. These are attributes that make the country what it is, it is part of its national character. These attributes, however, also undermine the community-based power of rites of passage. Placing all of the responsibility on the individual will leave them unguided making the Passage more dangerous and time consuming. “In today’s society we seem unable to accePt the fact of adolescence, that there are young PeoPle in transition from childhood to adulthood who need adult guidance and direction” (Elkind 1984: 4). In the United States today, adolescent boys do not begin their transition to adulthood quickly. “There is a deeP seated fear that we might not ever become men” and that fear tends to be self actualized in a delay in the rite of passage of initiation 4 (Raphael 1988: 145). They tend to stay at home longer or move on to college which will delay the time it will take them to start a career and a family, which are aspects of becoming a functioning member of the American community. The adolescent boy can easily become confused from the array of Possible markers for adulthood. “The age that rePresented adulthood became grayer and grayer as being able to drive, join the army and drink became further aPart” (Staller 2006: 18).
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