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.
Chapter 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Westward”
Heat-Moon’s circuit around the country nears its conclusion. The final chapter is the book’s shortest and begins with Heat-Moon spending more time in Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay area. In the harbor, he marvels at the skipjacks—a traditional fishing boat that may eventually face extinction due to technological progress and commercial demand.
After departing Maryland, Heat-Moon traverses historically significant territory—old US Civil War battle sites, such as Spotsylvania. Heat-Moon suggests that one thing seems impervious to change: war. While warfare methods have and will continue to evolve, the author implies that the human appetite for war probably never will change.
As Heat-Moon approaches West Virginia, it occurs to him that his route over the last months, one he has traced out on a map, somewhat resembles the emergence symbol of the Hopi. Heat-Moon quotes Black Elk Speaks: “[E]verything the Power of the World does is in a circle” (406). Heat-Moon appears to be synthesizing the abundant philosophical ideas he has pondered in the text.
Heat-Moon mentions that he has traveled over 13,000 miles, and as he approaches Ohio State Route 218, he encounters the worst road conditions yet, due to dilapidated pavement. Once past, the last leg of his monumental journey begins. He fills his gas tank for the last time, talks briefly with the station attendant—and the book ends here.
Chapter 10 Analysis
Heat-Moon is relentlessly plagued by an unresolved grief over transience, whether actual or anticipated. Observing the Maine skipjacks and their sailors, he again ruminates on the recurring theme of lost history, imagining the traditional fishing boats face the technology-driven peril of extinction. Likewise, while homeward bound and traveling through West Virginia, the author enters into the small town of Sutton and points out that it “was an old and grizzled place of maimed men” and that everything within the town, “people, streets, buildings […] seemed to be nearing an end” (407). For example, there is Elliot’s Fountain, a place that once was a community-centered business where people would gather for milkshakes in the fashion of a Norman Rockwell painting. However, the business now has lost that appeal. In its place is an outlet with merchandise stacked top to bottom in every nook and cranny of the building.
Heat-Moon laments the loss of this soda-fountain pharmacy and the Rockwell vision of America. However, more significantly, the loss is due not just to the inevitability of change but to relentless capitalistic pursuit. The Sutton pharmacy, like so many destinations on the trip, has changed almost beyond recognition and for no substantive reason but rampant commercialism.
The travelogue does not conclude with the author’s arrival home; the homecoming remains implicit, and in a way, the circle traced across the map is incomplete. The narrative ends at a gas station on the outskirts of Columbia. Furthermore, while Heat-Moon has spent a great deal of his narrative reflecting on the things he sees, the people and places he visits, and the history of each location, he claims that “I can’t say, over the miles, that I had learned what I had wanted to know because I hadn’t known what I wanted to know” (411). Though this confession seems enigmatic, it shows Heat-Moon’s self-awareness. Put simply, his mind was open, and for most of his journey, it stayed open. This open-mindedness enabled Heat-Moon to experience the trip as it unfolded and to “learn what I didn’t know I wanted to know” (411). This is the book’s most enduring message: Discovery—of oneself or the world—requires an open mind.
