First Advisor

Diana Abu-Jaber

Term of Graduation

Spring 2000

Date of Publication

5-4-2000

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in English

Department

English

Language

English

DOI

10.15760/etd.4159

Physical Description

1 online resource (85 pages)

Abstract

The Long Road Home, a short prose epic, concerns the adventure and political coming-of-age of two sixteen-year-old boys, Dean and Blake. The boys hitchhike from their hometown of Pittsburgh to Greensboro, North Carolina in order to attend a march against the Ku Klux Klan. Dean and Blake are politically idealistic and naïve boys who learn a lot about the complexities of race relations in America on their adventure. The boys encounter a variety of people on their trip and in Greensboro, some of whom are hostile, friendly, indifferent, deceptive, generous, and downright strange.

When the day of the march against the Klan finally arrives the boys only march for about ten minutes before being tackled and arrested by riot police for being in possession of weapons. The boys do not consider the knife and the sharpened stick they are carrying to be weapons, nor do they intend to use them as weapons, but they are hauled into jail nevertheless. After the police discover that the boys are only sixteen they call their parents and arrange to have money wired down in order to put the boys on a bus for home. The boys convince the police to take them to the house where they are staying in order to retrieve their backpacks. Convinced that the police intend to beat them up before delivering them to the bus station, the boys give the police false directions, and when they are let out of the police car without handcuffs they run from the police and hide in some nearby woods. The boys eventually return to the house for their backpacks and make their way back through the woods to the highway. On the highway they are rescued and driven in the direction of home by a friendly old black man in an ancient pickup truck who had earlier given them a ride to Greensboro.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44712

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