Volkswagen “Thing”

Volkswagen “Thing” is Henry Chinaski’s orange Volkswagen, a distinctive but unreliable car that carries him through departures, errands, and late-night misadventures. Its importance lies in its double role: Chinaski depends on it for mobility, yet its failures and physical limits repeatedly interrupt his plans, turning an ordinary vehicle into an active force in the disorder around him.

Identity and Condition

The car is recognizable by its orange color and tank-like appearance. When Lydia Vance drives away after destroying Chinaski’s typewriter, radio, and toaster, he identifies her getaway vehicle to the police as an orange Volkswagen called “the Thing.” He can recall the letters HZY but not the full license number, offering the officers the mnemonic “HAZY.” The exchange makes the car a practical clue in the immediate aftermath of the destruction, but also establishes its memorable nickname and imposing look.

Its condition is far from dependable. On another occasion, Chinaski warns Liza Weston that the clutch needs care and that second gear is defective, especially on the descent, where it grinds. The warning shows that the car is both a resource he is willing to lend and a machine whose limitations require attention. It can carry people across town or into the hills, but it does not offer effortless or safe transportation.

Mobility, Risk, and Dependence

When Chinaski rushes to the airport, he leaves without baggage, taking only his reading glasses. He drives the Volkswagen despite struggling to steer it: the car keeps pulling across the double yellow line and into oncoming traffic, and he has to correct course when other drivers honk. At the airport, after running red lights and stop signs and speeding, he finds the lot full, parks in a space marked “NO PARKING,” and drops and breaks his glasses as he locks the car. The sequence binds the vehicle to his hurried, hazardous departure; it enables him to reach the airport, but does not make the journey controlled or safe.

After a five-day trip, Chinaski returns to Los Angeles and worries about what happened to the Volkswagen. He assumes it has been towed when he does not see it at first in the airport parking area, then finds it on the other side with only a parking ticket. The return home restores the car to his possession without resolving the surrounding disorder: his apartment remains full of bottles and trash. The car’s survival through the trip is a modest reprieve, not a transformation of his circumstances.

The Volkswagen also supports Chinaski’s obligations to other people. When Liza Weston takes his keys, he tells her where the car is and cautions her about the clutch and damaged second gear. Later, Chinaski drives two German hippies, Gertrude and Hilda, up into the Hollywood Hills, following their directions as the road climbs into a wealthy neighborhood. The car brings them to the bottom of a long winding driveway; they get out with their canvas bags and walk up, while Chinaski turns around and glides back down. In these scenes the vehicle extends his reach, but its use remains contingent on its mechanical limits and on where its passengers need to go.

The Rattan Chair Incident

The clearest instance of the Volkswagen’s physical limits comes during Chinaski’s attempt to move Tammie’s belongings. At four in the morning, after drinking vodka and water, he chooses a heavy rattan chair as the final load because the car cannot take both the chair and a stand-up hair dryer. He tries to fit the chair through the passenger-side door. It jams; one leg breaks through the windshield and points upward, while the door will not close. His efforts to pull the chair back out or push it farther in fail.

Unable to free the chair, Chinaski drives to a pizza-parlor parking lot with the door swinging open and the ceiling light on. The broken windshield and chair leg remain visible, and the car is left in an exposed, unusable state. The episode turns a routine transportation problem into a prolonged confrontation with the Volkswagen’s size and the chair’s resistance: neither object yields to Chinaski’s improvised solution. He phones Tammie for help, then sleeps anxiously, worrying that the car will be towed and that he will be arrested.

At 6:20 in the morning, the Volkswagen is still in the lot. Chinaski returns to the chair and, after repeated pulling and yanking, breaks it apart and removes it from the car. He stacks the pieces neatly on a nearby lawn, finds a parking space for the Volkswagen, and postpones buying a replacement windshield. The car is usable again, but only after the chair has been destroyed; the practical problem is resolved through damage rather than repair.

Narrative Role

Across these episodes, Volkswagen “Thing” is more than transport, though its significance stays grounded in practical use. It carries Chinaski toward an airport, lends mobility to Liza Weston, and takes Gertrude and Hilda into the Hollywood Hills. At the same time, its poor steering, failing gears, constrained interior, and smashed windshield expose how little control he has over the situations he enters. The vehicle’s repeated appearance brings that tension into concrete view: mobility promises escape and convenience, but each journey depends on a machine that can veer, grind, become overloaded, or be left behind in disrepair.

The nickname also suits the car’s distinctive presence in the narrative. It is identified by color and shape, remembered through a fragment of its license letters, and repeatedly treated as an object with its own stubborn physical demands. In the chair episode especially, the Volkswagen’s capacity is not an abstract inconvenience; it determines what Chinaski can move and forces the action toward the smashed windshield and broken furniture. Its function is therefore both material and structural: the car helps propel Chinaski through the world while making the costs and limits of his impulsive movement impossible to overlook.