Volkswagen Blues

La Grande Sauterelle is hitchhiking to the town of Gaspé to see her mother when Jack stops his Volkswagen to pick her up. Jack first notices her black kitten, who will travel with them throughout the course of the novel and who will eventually be named “Chop Suey.” After the kitten explores the van and signals to La Grande Sauterelle that “It’s all right” (5), the girl shuts her door and their journey together begins.

The girl is 21 years old and is “a Métis”: Her father is French Canadian, and her mother was born into the Montagnais nation but “lost her Indian status” when she married a white man (69). The girl’s French name, La Grande Sauterelle, refers to her long legs (sauterelle means “grasshopper” in French), but she has another name, Pitsémine, which is Montagnais and which she always uses when inscribing her signature. With her long black hair and dark eyes, she favors her mother’s people in appearance. She also enjoys walking barefoot and, just as “the Indians’ sexual practices were more liberal than the whites” (53), La Grande Sauterelle’s are more liberal than Jack’s.

The girl is also like her father, however. When Jack comments on how well she drives the minibus, the girl says she learned from her father, who was a trucker. At age 15, she “drove a ten-ton Mack from Baie Comeau to Manicouagan” (16) while her father, who was ill, slept beside her. She is now a skilled mechanic, perhaps because of her formative experiences with her father.

Equal parts Indigenous and French Canadian, the girl is “torn between the two” identities (38). She hopes to “become reconciled with herself” (56) by sleeping beside the grave of a Mohawk chief, but the plan fails when, during the night, she “lost confidence” in his so-called greatness. The girl does have confidence in herself, however, and maybe this is why she never fully surrenders to despair, as Jack does, when challenging situations arise. Intrepid and outspoken, she fiercely denounces the legendary white explorers of North America—many of whom are Jack’s heroes—who killed Indigenous people and stole their land. Moreover, like an explorer, she is comfortable with the unknown, as she acknowledges when she explains, “I never know ahead of time what I’m going to do” (24).

After they reach the Continental Divide, La Grande Sauterelle expresses uncharacteristic hopelessness about her divided heritage, suggesting that because “she was neither Indian nor white, […] she was nothing at all” (169). Jack urges her to think of herself as “something new, something that’s beginning” (169), and so she does, particularly after they arrive in San Francisco. She feels at home there and “thought that the city, where the races seemed to live in harmony, was a good place to try to come to terms with her own twofold heritage” (219-20). As she sets out to reconcile the different identities she embodies into “something new,” La Grande Sauterelle symbolizes Quebec’s potential to do the same, after having lost its bid for recognition as an independent, francophone state.

The character of Théo is, essentially, Jack’s creation. The narrative never accesses Théo’s consciousness; he never speaks directly, and any words he has spoken in the past are mediated by Jack’s memory. As Jack’s construction, Théo is strong, daring, and valiant—and even navigates frozen underground streams. He is the image of the North American French explorers that he and Jack revered as children. Jack remembers Théo entertaining other boys with the story of explorer Étienne Brûlé, and how “he had a special way of telling it: with many gestures he mimed the events so that everyone could see how Étienne Brûlé, arriving in New France with Champlain,” gained the Indigenous people’s trust, lived among them “as one of their own,” and led successful expeditions into the south (45). In Jack’s memory, Théo becomes one with Brûlé.

Evidence uncovered during Jack’s search for Théo contests the image he’s created of his brother. In Detroit, Théo tangled with police and was charged with possession of an “unlicensed firearm.” More scuffles with the law occurred near Kansas City, where Théo was accused of attempted robbery at a museum and of battering the museum guard “with a blunt instrument” (100). Although the bull rider’s wife recalls Théo’s stay at Chimney Rock with fondness, she also “had the impression that Théo was running away from something” (145). Lisa, Théo’s girlfriend in San Francisco, describes him not as bold and resolute, but as incapable of withstanding life’s trials. She compares him to those who “let themselves drift along on the current and they go under” (209).

When Théo himself finally appears at the end of the novel, he cannot speak or walk due to “creeping paralysis.” Who the real Théo is remains a mystery. Considering his possessions (as recorded in his Toronto police record)—copies of On the Road and The Oregon Trail Revisited—Théo was likely questioning his identity long before Jack did.

The vagabond is an old man with “crafty” eyes who hitches a ride with Jack and La Grande Sauterelle in Nevada. Although he once had a home in Ketchum, Nevada, he prefers “the road. It was his way of living” (173). He claims to have lived in Paris in the 1920s, on Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, but when Jack speaks French, the old man nods in agreement “without much conviction” (173). At present, he is making his way to the Oregon shore, as he does every summer, along the Oregon Trail. He routinely goes to Key West for the winter, where he might do some odd jobs but mostly just rambles the streets, enjoying the old houses and stray cats.

As Jack points out, the description the vagabond gives of his life sounds a great deal like Hemingway’s, throwing into question the character of the old man. He does, however, possess surprising insight into Théo’s course of action. After Jack relates all they’ve discovered during their search for Théo, “omitting nothing,” the vagabond declares that Théo went to California, not Oregon. The vagabond himself goes to Oregon because while he may be “a tramp,” he’s “not a bum” (178). He thus implicitly identifies Théo as a bum.

Jack often fondly refers to his minibus as “The Volks,” and Chapter 7 reveals “the secret life of the Volkswagen” in such a way as to personify it as an old vagabond (56). Originally from Germany, the Volks “had crossed the Atlantic on a freighter, then it had travelled along the east coast, from the Maritime provinces to southern Florida” (59). Now advanced in years and in Jack’s custody, the Volks has several quirky habits, such as seatbelts that don’t easily unfasten—“you had the impression that the Volks was reluctant to let people go” (59). Its dominating characteristic, however, is “that it very much disliked being hurried” and would protest in a variety of ways should the driver try to do so (59). Having journeyed nearly 200,000 kilometers during its life, the Volks “wanted respect for its age, its experience and its odd little ways” (60).

Lisa was Théo’s girlfriend before he left San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood five years earlier. She now works as a “live naked girl” in a glass showcase who, for one dollar, will talk privately with anyone. Originally from Montréal, “she had travelled a lot,” as far as South America and India (209). Jack and La Grande Sauterelle pay to speak with her, and she says, with respect to Théo, that “life’s hard on everybody. Some people can’t stick it out and it’s rough” (209). Lisa, by contrast, has the resilience to “stick it out,” perhaps because she is not invested in any particular self-image but, as a girl in a showcase, assumes whatever persona is most marketable.

The Bull Rider’s Wife is big—at least “six feet tall” (139)—and has a “beautiful round face all full of light” (141). She lives in a trailer at the entrance to Chimney Rock and, when she’s not greeting tourists, she’s killing the rattlesnakes “that infested the area around the stone chimney” (144). The sight of Jack stirs her memory of Théo who, years ago, stopped at Chimney Rock for two days during his journey along the Oregon Trail. Because the woman radiates such warmth and strength, when she talks of Théo with great fondness, “it was if Jack’s brother had been absolved, washed clean of all the accusations” of criminality that littered his trail westward (144).