Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” encompasses ideas of the beat generation, takes you along, and allows you to see the people and the situations of America at a time immediately following World War II; how people lived, and how, at least in Sal’s case, people changed. Kerouac exemplifies one’s dissatisfaction with the responsibilities that the society ties an individual down with, opting to always be on the road avoiding commitment, therefore antagonizing themselves from the mainstream views of the post-world war II American society.
Among many attitudes revealed and formed by the American people of the post-World War II age, the most outstanding and significant one that stands out in On the Road is that which is carefree and action orientated. This train of thought is contrary to that of those Americans from before, who, unlike Sal, Dean, and so many others, believed in living a life consisting of conservatism and stability.
Many things took place towards the end of World War II, such as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a growing distrust of the Soviet Union. These events are among those that had the people of America thinking that their lives as they know it could end at any point in time thoughts that led to their carefree and action orientated lifestyles; after all, if in fact there are only few days left in one’s existence, doesn’t it make that much more sense to enjoy those times left on Earth and not worry about the future?
Having this Second World War behind them, Americans now had different worries pestering at their lives. For one thing, even though it was almost a decade behind them, memories and thoughts of the Great Depression still lingered in the minds of many Americans. Scared of...
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...e father and who was the son of antique life on earth, and made no comment” (Kerouac Road 280).
It seems that Sal changed from the beginning of the novel to the end, for both the better and the worse. He grew as a person and really found out who he was, but he did do some wrong things in order to get to that discovery. Ultimately, the novel is trying to tell us that our own identity is very personal and quite malleable. Every day that we live, we change a little bit and grow a little bit. Some morally dishonest acts may help to round out a flat and boring personality, but it is not absolutely necessary. In conclusion, the rhetoric appeal to character used in this novel is a very effective one because this sort of appeal helps to draw the audience into the book. It is up to the individual reader whether or not the characters are performing morally wrong acts or not.
In Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1939: Decades of Promise and Pain, author David E. Kyvig, creates historical account of the Great Depression, and the events leading up to it. Kyvig’s goal in writing this book was to show how Americans had to change their daily life in order to cope with the changing times. Kyvig utilizes historical evidence and inferences from these events and developments to strengthen his point. The book is organized chronologically, recounting events and their effects on American culture. Each chapter of the book tackles a various point in American history between 1920 and1939 and events are used to comment on American life at the time. While Kyvig does not exactly have a “thesis” per se, his main point is to examine American life under a microscope, seeing how people either reacted, or were forced to react due to a wide range of specific events or developments in history, be it Prohibition, the KKK, or women’s suffrage.
In Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road, the two main characters struggle to keep moving forward. Their motivation to push onward is found in the bottom levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; which are physiological, safety, and emotional. Each of the levels are equally important in order for the man to reach self-actualization. In order to reach the top level, however, the man must fulfill the bottom levels first.
The Great Depression often seems very distant to people of the 21st century. This article is a good reminder of potential problems that may reoccur. The article showed in a very literal way the idea that a depression can bring a growing country to its knees. The overall ramifications of the event were never discussed in detail, but the historical significance is that people's lives were put on hold while they tried to struggle through an extremely difficult time.
288-293. ed. a. Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Kerouac, Jack.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once asserted “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people,” in belief for a change, for a better nation, and for guidance to those who have lost all faith in humanity. During the Great Depression, the United States faced many different scenarios in which it caused people to doubt and question the “American Dream.” The Great Depression began in 1929 and ended in 1939. In these ten years, people went through unemployment, poverty, banks failed and people lost hope. President Herbert Hoover thought it wasn’t his responsibility to try and fix such issues in the nation.
Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945. Oxford History of the United States: Oxford University Press. Davidson, J. W., Delay, B., et al. (2005). The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary'.
During the post WWII period in America, the face of the nation changed greatly under the presidency of Truman and Eisenhower. America underwent another era of good feelings as they thought themselves undefeatable and superior over the rest of the world. Communism was the American enemy and American sought to rid the world of it. Because of the extreme paranoia caused by Communism, conformity became an ideal way to distinguish American Culture from the rest. Conformity became a part of every American Life to a large extent. It became evident through the medium of culture, society and politics throughout the era of the 50s.
The Effect of the Great Depression on National and Individual Morale The Great Depression of the 1930’s was an era of hopelessness and fear for many. Coming soon after the prosperous Coolidge era, the Depression affected a nation of people who had based their self esteem around their ability to work and provide well for their families (Clements, page 67 - 69). Individuals and families had to contend not only with an existence that pushed people close to suicide and starvation, but a total loss of self worth and the haunting memories of the cars, radios and relatively luxurious lives they would have led five years previously.
We Americans have a fondness of looking back to certain times with bouts of nostalgia, clutching closely the burred images of better off and more secure conditions. We seek to revive those past years, hoping to cure all of our current societal ills. Why cannot we bring them back? The economy was good, and the family was happy, we say.
During the 1920’s, America was a prosperous nation going through the “Big Boom” and loving every second of it. However, this fortune didn’t last long, because with the 1930’s came a period of serious economic recession, a period called the Great Depression. By 1933, a quarter of the nation’s workers (about 40 million) were without jobs. The weekly income rate dropped from $24.76 per week in 1929 to $16.65 per week in 1933 (McElvaine, 8). After President Hoover failed to rectify the recession situation, Franklin D. Roosevelt began his term with the hopeful New Deal. In two installments, Roosevelt hoped to relieve short term suffering with the first, and redistribution of money amongst the poor with the second. Throughout these years of the depression, many Americans spoke their minds through pen and paper. Many criticized Hoover’s policies of the early Depression and praised the Roosevelts’ efforts. Each opinion about the causes and solutions of the Great Depression are based upon economic, racial and social standing in America.
In Cormac McCarthy’s Sci-Fi novel, “The Road”, two mysterious people, a father and his curious son, contact survival of the fittest during tragic apocalyptic times. With a shopping cart of food and supplies, they excavate into the remains of tattered houses, torn buildings and other sheltering places, while averting from troublesome communes. In the duration of the novel, they’re plagued with sickness that temporarily unable them to proceed onward. Due to the inopportune events occurring before the apocalypse, the wife of the son and father committed suicide due to these anonymous survivors lurking the remains of earth. The last people on earth could be the ‘bad guys’ as the young boy describes them. In page 47, the wife reacted to this, stating, “Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won't face it. You'd rather wait for it to happen. But I can't.”
Kerouac guides the reader to the understanding that "IT" can be different for everyone. Sal began his search for "IT" because he was restless in ...
With the end of the first World War in the year 1918, many soldiers, young and old, came home to their families dark and cynical. Many famous authors of this time, like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, wrote short stories not of their times at war, but of how material the world truly is. These were considered the “Lost Generation,” due to their lack of belief in humans in general and their dreary outlook of life in general. F. Scott Fitzgerald is famous for his book, The Great Gatsby which showed how he as an author viewed the Roaring Twenties, as one of the main themes is the idea that the American Dream is dead and humans are fickle and obsessed with material things, like money. On the opposite end of the spectrum, though, was the bright young generation, which “came into power” shortly after the Lost Generation. These young people were full of bright ideas and with the American Economy is a good place, everyone seemed to be happy. Art and fashion changed drastically, w...
While the Beats experimented with drugs, they were more mild in their departure from the mainstream culture than the counterculture of the hippies and acid-heads . Tom Wolfe observed that, ““Kerouac was the old star. Kesey was the wild new comet form the West heading Christ knows where”” (Lytle, 4). Even though Kerouac was a major part of the Beat movement and experimented with drugs, he was not cut out for the world of LSD. When considering On the Road, Sal Paradise, does in the end return home to his mother just as Kerouac did when Neal Cassady tried to get him to join Kesey. In Howl, Allen Ginsberg laments over the deprivation of his generation. He addresses one of the roots of the problem, “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!” (Part II, l.5). He blames the mechanization of the mind, prefer a more steeped in nature approach, drugs as bringing us closer to our own nature The ideas of the Beats echo in the ideas of the counter: a rejection of materialism, an embrace of experimentation with drugs, sexuality, and forms of expression, especially music. The change from the Beats to the Hippies was not so much a ra...
The age of the Great Depression was littered with varying stories of extreme poverty rivaled by the contrasting stories of the .1 percent of society that possessed extreme wealth. President Hoover called the depression “a passing incident in our national lives” (cite 1) which proved to be a gross underestimation of the severity of the situation. The previous decades that brought roaring success and expanding technology was thought to be a period of great success that was earned through hard work and fluid government; and so when the economy collapsed blame turned inward and failure felt deserved just the same.