On The Road, On The Mall Summary and Analysis

These two essays of 'On the Road' and 'On the Mall' fit together both as examples of two of the most important examples of the collective experience of modern Americans; that of traveling, and going shopping in the Malls (otherwise known as the 'super-shopping' centers).

What follows for Didion are two very different accounts of common American activities, and by studying them a wish to understand the commonalities of the American psyche. The first essay of 'On the Road' is a literary allusion to the great American travel novel, a formula which has been repeated again and again (and the very title of this essay is a homage to Kerouac's seminal work of post-modern traveling, a book of the same name).

The essay itself, paradoxically features more heavily the element of...