What is the climax of "Car Crash While Hitchhiking?"
Since the story is told in a non-linear fashion, there is no proper climax chronologically. The most important event of the story is the crash itself, insofar as it affects the narrator's mind and his ability to understand events; he is high on speed and other drugs, and so the crash seems to him to be inevitable, although this is a product of his delusions. The resulting cleanup and investigation by the police leads the narrator to explain that he finds himself not actually part of the crash, although he was there and experienced it firsthand; he claims to have changed from "president" (as a person conscious and aware) to a bystander, since the emergency workers do not consider him critical compared to the injured people. One possible climax comes in the hospital, as the narrator describes the wife of a dead man arriving:
Down the hall came the wife....
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us... She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.
"There's nothing wrong with me"—I'm surprised I let those words out.
(Johnson, "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," hotgiraffe.msk.ru)
It is this experience that most touches the narrator, not the crash itself or the inexplicable survival of the baby in the back seat. His later hallucinations are echoes of this experiences; inanimate objects become voices in his head just as he imagined the wife's screaming to have some solid form. That he went "looking for that feeling everywhere" shows how much it affected his mind; the narrator is not stable to begin with, but even the crash is not as significant as this single moment in the hospital.
What is the main conflict in "Car Crash While Hitchhiking"?
The main issue in Denis Johnson's "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" is responsibility and helping others. The story's narrator, a young man, tells of a car accident he was in. A family from Marshalltown gave him a ride during a storm. The narrator had recently gotten out of another car, and he had large amounts of drugs and alcohol into his system.
The narrator comes across a family while "something less than conscious," and he believes that there will be a horrible accident (apparently, he can glimpse the future). He accepts the ride while knowing that the accident will happen. Not caring that the accident will take place, the narrator gets into the car because the family agrees to take him all the way to his final destination.
After the accident, no one seems to want to take any responsibility for either the accident or the aftermath. The man driving the car denies the accident. The narrator denies the wife's death. The truck driver, who happens on the accident, does not want to go for help, stating that he cannot turn around where he is at. He also refuses to take the baby, but he does agree to allow the narrator and baby to sit in the cab until help comes. Lastly, the narrator ends up in the hospital, refusing treatment.
The story then jumps forward in time to several years later. The narrator is again in the hospital, this time due to drug abuse. The story ends with the narrator speaking directly to the reader: "And you, you ridiculous people, expect me to help you."
Essentially, the issue lies in people not taking responsibility for their actions. It also lies in people not wanting to take responsibility for things that they do not find necessary (like a car accident involving others).
Superficially, one could also argue that the issue of the story lies in drug abuse and the ramifications which arise because of drug abuse. Given that the closing situation revolves around the narrator's drug abuse, one could easily state that drug abuse is an underlying issue raised in the text.