88 pages • 2 hours read
Che GuevaraThe Motorcycle Diaries
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Key Figures
Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna
Guevara was born in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, Argentina in 1928 and died by execution in La Higuera, Vallegrande, Bolivia in 1967. Guevara is best known as a key figure in the Cuban Revolution, a diplomat, and a guerilla strategist.
At the beginning of The Motorcycle Diaries, which chronicles the journey that radicalized him, Guevara is a restless 23-year-old medical student who dreams of something more romantic and fulfilling than medical studies, exams, and hospitals. He has a girlfriend, Chichina, whom he is reluctant to leave behind, but when she leaves him, instead, he realizes that his feelings for her were less significant than he thought.
Offhand talk and daydreaming lead to a real decision: along with his friend, Alberto Granado, Guevara undertakes a transformative motorcycle journey to North America. Their journey begins as a lighthearted and freewheeling one, characterized by good meals and happy times with new and old friends. Guevara, who suffers from asthma and is prone to a poetic, sometimes rather exalted and often very witty writing style, emerges as the more peaceful of the two friends and frequently keeps Granado from starting fights, though Guevara, too, occasionally starts some mischief by attempting to steal 
