Chapter 23 Summary

Ray hitchhikes from El Paso to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and then on to Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, he catches a train, hobo-style, and rides as far as Santa Barbara, where he spends an evening sleeping on the beach. He then catches another train, hobo-style, to San Francisco, where he searches for Japhy's shack.

Chapter 23 Analysis

This chapter concludes Ray's cross-country journey from North Carolina to San Francisco and contains many descriptive passages. One of the most interesting features of Chapter Twenty-Three is a typographical error where Ray states "...and Gary was waiting for me at the shack" (p. 161). Actually, Japhy is waiting for Ray at the shack, but the reference is to Gary Snyder, a real person on whom Japhy Ryder's character is based. This accidental misnomer reinforces the nature of the novel as being a lightly fictionalized biographical account of...