Journey Narrative

The Motorcycle Diaries

The Motorcycle Diaries is a memoir turned motion picture chronicling the travels of a 23-year-old medical student by the name of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and his close friend and biochemist, 29-year-old Alberto Granado.  Only a semester away from completing his medical degree, Guevara left home in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a year to explore the South America that he and Granado had only studied in books.  Departing Buenos Aires on their unreliable Norton 500 motorcycle, which they lovingly called “La Poderosa”, they trekked through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Venezuela, Panama, and Miami before returning home to Buenos Aires.  Over the course of this eye-opening expedition into the heart of Latin America, Guevara and Granado undergo a myriad of experiences that undoubtedly pull them closer to the natural beauty of the land and the indigenous peasantry populating it.

After witnessing social injustice in form of poverty, political oppression, and disenfranchisement among other things, Guevara returns home to complete his studies a changed man forever.  Inspired by the events and people of his road trip, Che no longer wants to practice medicine; instead, guided by Marxist ideals, he goes on to become a primary figure leading the Cuban Revolution against the regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959.  His devotion to the poor and natural longing for something better, transformed him into the iconic revolutionary that he later became.

Che’s geographical journey as a temporal development is very much parallel to the short stories we have read for class; for example, Guevara embarks on his journey from the metropolitan city of Buenos Aires to visit less urbanized communities.  By venturing into the untamed lands of Latin America, staying mostly clear of big populated cities, Guevara feels himself being pulled back in time; his experiences in nature in accordance with quality interactions with the various personages he meets along the way, causes Guevara to undergo a mental transformation.  When he returns to Buenos Aires, he finds everything just as he had left it, but now he is a changed man.  As Young Goodman Brown could never see the world the same after his encounters in nature, Ernesto Guevara too could not see politics, people, and nations with the same ignorance that he had before his trip.  As a result, his goals and aspirations changed to meet his newly found devotion to the indigenous peoples of Latin America.  In terms of opposing values, the ones most prevalent in this movie are: poor vs. rich, man vs. government, and imperialism vs. indigenous.