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again in their oppressiveness. George Hanson, played by Jack Nicholson, beautifully summarizes the film's message in a conversation with Billy, Dennis Hopper's character, before George is murdered by local rednecks:

George
They scared of what you represent to them. What you represent to them is freedom.

Billy
What the hell's wrong with freedom? That's what it's all about.

George
That's what it's all about, alright. But talking about it and being it - that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, cause they're gonna get real busy killin and maimin to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they gonna talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But if they see a free individual, it's gonna scare em.

Billy
That don't make em running scared.

George
No, it makes em dangerous.

Throughout the film, Billy and Wyatt, played by Peter Fonda, have several run-ins with the system and the unfree. They are denied a room at a motel. They land in jail for "parading without a permit". They are attacked in the woods at night by a team of rowdy and violent good-ole-boys. They are killed in the end by two rednecks in a pick-up. When Wyatt comments to Billy in their last conversation scene, "We blew it.", his words answer many questions asked earlier. Wyatt and Billy were convinced that money would free them, but it didn't. The statement also applies in general to the entire peace and social justice movement of the 60s - it failed. The system can't be defeated; the free, it seems, will always be attacked and ultimately defeated, ironically by those who profess to treasure freedom the most.

Learn more about this author, Webster Wade.
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