Matthew Guzdial, Post Four

From the very beginning, it was clear Bryson and Katz would never complete the Appalachian Trail. Though this was foreshadowed numerous times, the most obvious and first time was within chapter one, when Bryson a large proportion of the chapter explaining all the difficulties of the trail in hilarious detail. This original foreshadowing, despite the humor within it, almost serves as an excuse from the author for his later deviance from the original plan.

But despite the fact that Bryson never finishes hiking the Appalachian Trail, he does accomplish what he set out to do. Though Joy has already mentioned most of the reasons the author listed within chapter one, there is still the need for Bryson to write the book. Though this starts off as just another excuse, a reason among a half dozen other rationalizations, our narrator slowly begins to take more interest in this purpose for his grand hiking adventure. The most obvious example of this is in the way that Bryson describes people throughout the book. Starting with Wes Wisson, the man who originally drives Bryson and Katz to the trail, we are told only that he is friendly and wears a baseball cap. However, by the end of the novel by which time Bryson has begun to really take things in for preparation of the novel he is yet to write we meet Joan Bishop, the owner of the Boarding-house in which Bryson and Katz spend the last night of their adventure, and spend a good paragraph learning about the woman  and her mannerisms.