Importance of Motel

The motel represents the failure of Claude and Janice’s efforts to find a place where they belong. Though Claude thinks that he might be able to find belonging by going to college in Missouri, he ends up hiding in the motel with Janice, wondering where he might go next. At the end of the novel, they find that they cannot even find belonging in the motel, as they are driven to hide in a storage room by an angry white mob.