17 pages • 34 minutes read
On the Move
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Themes
Motorcycle Culture
The central image in the poem is the motorcycle gang roaring down the California highway on their powerful machines. Embodying youth and rebellion, they have a devil-may-care attitude. They are brash, self-confident, and beholden to no one. As they ride together, all-as-one, they are bound for nowhere in particular. The freedom of the wide road ahead is all that they need. They may seem aimless to others, but they are alert to whatever may come up on the journey and ready for new vistas and experiences. With their “gleaming” (Line 14) black leather jackets, the deafening sound of their motorcycles, and the sheer physicality of how they control them (“Held by calf and thigh” [Line 12]), Gunn’s presentation of “the Boys” (Line 10) captures a moment in American social history. Motorcycles were affordable and presented a great attraction for a post-World War II generation of male youth who felt the need to rebel against what they perceived as the drab conformism of 1950s America. They enjoyed cultivating the bad boy and outlaw image that could be easily created with a black leather jacket, a tough look, and a motorcycle. There was a strong element of masculine—phallic energy in it, too—suggested in the lines, “astride the created will / They burst away” (Lines 34-35), and “their hum / Bulges to thunder held by calf and thigh” (Lines 11-12). “Will” has been vulgar slang for the male sexual organ since at least the time of Shakespeare, although Gunn later claimed that at the time, he was unaware of this.
Contrast Between Man and Nature
On several occasions, the poem contrasts humans with the natural world. The first four lines are devoted to imagery of birds nestling in bushes or trees or flying across the fields. Birds and other animals have distinct purpose in life, which they follow as a matter of instinct, and they achieve those purposes (as Line 37 states). In this, they offer a clear contrast to human beings. A bird or animal is preconditioned to live in a certain way and to do certain things. In the existential philosophy underpinning the poem, the essence of the birds precedes their existence, so when they come into the world their preformed essence entirely dictates their nature and their actions.
By contrast, human beings have freedom to determine their own identity and purpose. Two lines in Stanza 3 about the motorcyclists, “They scare a flight of birds across the field: / Much that is natural, to the will must yield” (Lines 20-21), suggest the superiority of the human will to the instinctual life of the animal kingdom; the exertion of this will can disrupt the natural world. Because the human being is only “half animal” (Line 35), he cannot entirely rely on instinct to guide him, but that very quality also offers greater possibilities.
Human Freedom and Responsibility
After the first five lines describing the activities of birds, the first stanza moves on to human life. The picture presented is not an especially encouraging one. Birds and animals know what they have to do, but for humans, life can appear opaque and puzzling: “One moves with an uncertain violence / Under the dust thrown by a baffled sense / Or the dull thunder of approximate words” (Lines 6-8). This suggests the starting point of much existential philosophy and speculation. What, then, in the face of this uncertainty, is man to do? The primary thing is for humans to realize that they create their own world and themselves. They “manufacture both machine and soul” (Line 22). Unlike animals, human existence precedes essence—to use the existentialist terms. They are free to form themselves according to their creative will; they are the “self-defined” (Line 34).
It is also their responsibility to do so. A key phrase appears in Stanza 3: Men must “dare a future” (Line 24). They must be bold, not timid. The exercise of the freedom of the creative will gives them a kind of power to shape the future into something worth living. However, an agreeable future is neither guaranteed nor the main object of the enterprise. The world may be “valueless” (Line 30), but what matters is that the search for meaning, or value is itself worthwhile—an end in itself—whatever it may ultimately produce. There is no grand goal, whether it be happiness, or salvation, or the good life, or some other “absolute” (Line 39), the attainment of which would allow a person to declare that the journey is over, and they may now rest.
On the contrary, there is simply the urgent necessity of movement, which is a kind of constant exploration and experimentation with the malleable texture of life. Human beings are thus “Afloat on movement” (Line 29)—a buoyant image conveying the notion of movement for its own sake. Men must make a conscious choice to enter into this constant flow, to stay “in motion” (Line 38). As long as they are in motion, they will at least be moving toward something. What that something is does not matter: It is unknown until it happens. The goal or ultimate destination is less important than the dynamic process that prevents stagnation and dull habituation. It is the journey that is the purpose. As the last line states, “One is always nearer by not keeping still” (Line 40).
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