Blue Highways (Begins With Direct Eye Contact

Blue Highways

(Begins with direct eye contact with a few individuals, giving the impression that you are looking at everyone. Take tone of analytical researcher devoid of individual interest. Two specific attitudes will be shown in this piece: one of analytical discusser and one that embodies the characters in the story).

The story begins with the reflection of the narrator and how he discovered the name of the town Nameless, Tennessee. This narrator is very much like that town itself. He is nameless and searching for a sense of meaning in his life and definition to his character. The narrator lists a series of town names associated with the stereotypical Deep South, like Ducktown, Peeled Chestnut, and Clouds. (list the names with an attitude of quaintness that the story indicates the narrator himself feels). It is important to keep this in mind because the story's central theme is about characters without names, symbolizing the anonymity of all small towns and the various travelers who we meet while just passing through.

(For the next section, tone should change to indicate the comfort of such small towns as the one the cafe is set in. You are no longer analyzer but part of the story.)

The narrator defines the different places he visits in terms of the number of calendars that are on the walls. One of his goals, in a world where people are focused on earning money and getting ahead, is to find the elusive seven-calendar cafe. (All quotes from the story should be performed in two ways: as sarcastic or dry from the perspective of narrator or sassy and female if from the viewpoint of the waitress). "Old-time travelers -- road men in a day when cars had running boards and lunchroom windows said AIR COOLED in blue letters with icicles dripping from the tops -- those travelers have told me the golden legends of seven-calendar cafes" (116). The legend of the South has been diluted into the presence of a number of calendars on the wall.

"To the rider of back roads, nothing shows the tone, the voice of a small town more quickly than the breakfast grill or the five-thirty tavern" (116). Inside the cafe where the majority of the story takes place, he is the only character who is not a native of this small town. (Expression should indicate a disapproval or suspicion of this intruder as you take on the persona of the townsfolk). Therefore he is as much an outsider in this cafe as the reader is unused to the particular lifestyle this narrator lives. Among the customers at this particular restaurant are various players that exist in any small town.

One of the trademarks of a small town cafe is the nosy waitress who will not let you be while you eat your food (impersonate this woman through gesture; a bending of the body at an angle and a hand on the hip). This cafe's waitress is no exception. In her discussion with the narrator, the waitress asks him if he is from the north. (Read this line with sarcasm as if you are above all these others who would label you) "A Missouran gets used to Southerners thinking him a Yankee, Northerners considering him a cracker, a Westerner sneering at his effete Easterness, and the Easterner taking him for a cowhand" (117). (Return to analytical voice). The narrator of this story has no name and no origin as well as no direction. His existence is determined by those who he encounters and their labeling of him is only in relation to the opposite of their own existence. He is from nowhere and headed to Nameless.