Jack Kerouac On The Road Banned

On the Road by Jack Kerouac, author during the Beats’ generation, is largely considered a novel that defined a generation. Despite this consideration, however, there are very many controversies linked to this book. Though many call the novel offensive, unexciting, and poorly written, Kerouac deserves the entirety of the acclamations he has received over the years as the result of his roman á clef. Along with literary classics such as The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Grapes of Wrath; On the Road has historically been challenged and even banned in classroom settings. If a novel is challenged, that means it has a message that breaks the status quo and pushes the boundaries of literature. On the Road objects stigmas about casual sex, the drug culture, poverty, capitalism and what it meant to be living in 1960’s America.

On the Road is a story about countless elements of life that are relative to almost everyone today. Understanding of time, spirituality, wisdom, reality, poverty, friendship, dissatisfaction, and admiration are all key components to the

novel. The novel, as previously mentioned, is a roman á clef, meaning that the characters in the book are based off of people in real life, despite the novel being fictional. Sal Paradise, a character loosely based off of Kerouac himself, is an aspiring writer that is lacking inspiration. Despite not being wild nor mad himself, he seeks company in characters that are larger than life. Dean Moriarty is the object of Sal’s obsession, and is rambunctious, untamable sporadic in his decision making. The novel is driven mainly by Dean’s sex drive: Dean goes wherever his current wife (or sexual partner) is, and Sal follows because he never quite feels at home unless he’s with Dean. The majority of the novel focuses on the yearning to be in another place and the actual process of getting there, rather than the experiences that are lived when they arrive.
Other prominent characters in the novel other than Dean and Sal include the sensual (probably homosexual) and sulking poet Carlo Marx, drunkard/druggie/mentor to Carlo and Sal, Old Bull Lee, Sal’s longtime sophisticated friend who rejects Dean’s form of life, Remi Boncouer, and all of Dean’s conquests who make constant appearances: Marylou (15 year of age when Dean became involved with her), Camille (father to two of his children) and Inez (Dean’s third wife and the only one with the sense not to follow him across the country). All of these characters are featured during the road (and drug) trips, but none are quite captured in the light that his idol, Dean Moriarty was. Sal’s willingness to follow Dean wherever he went leads from Sal being “naïve, listless and enervative… lifeless” to slowly adapting some of the personality traits from Dean: the novel ending in Sal’s acceptance that he has learned and lived with Dean, but it was time for him to move forward with his life.
On the Road exemplified the Beat Culture of the 1960’s in the words of every page. Reminiscing on his adventures (which are proximately synonymous with Sal Paradise’s) before his death, Kerouac claims that his travels would “soon be obsolete as America enters its High Civilization period and no one will get sentimental or poetic anymore about trains and dew on fences at dawn in Missouri.” As a college student in 2016, Kerouac seemed to know where the next few generations of Americans were going. While it isn’t as relatable now, On the Road gives valuable insight to the poetic nature of the true struggle it was to travel across the country due to poverty and general unwillingness to give strange, disheveled men rides. On the same topic, Kerouac stated: “You can’t do what I did anymore… I tried… I couldn’t get a ride... No room for a bum with a rucksack.” The 1960’s were clearly a time where poverty was more common, and not seen as something that non-impoverished people try to vehemently avoid.
Sal Paradise was hoping to find a different America than the one he found during his adventures. His hopes were particularly for an “open, free, frontier America” which was in turn lost in “the era of big government, big business and cultural homogeneity.” The entire point of the novel was to explore the way the Beat Generation would push boundaries. Essentially, Kerouac was criticizing the social norms of white suburban culture in Sal Paradise’s dissatisfaction with commonplace life. Michael Amundsen claimed that On the Road “is a compelling ethnographic portrait of the United States in the middle of the last century.” The portrait Amundsen is talking about encases the entirety of America: from the life that Sal is running away from, to the wild affairs of Dean Moriarty, to the subtle homosexuality of Carlo Marx, and even in the differences of culture explored in other races. Though Sal didn’t quite find the America that he was looking for, he reached a point where he realized that chasing the old American dream had to be replaced with an acceptance of reality.
According to the University of Connecticut’s study for Banned Books Week, On the Road was ranked number 31 on the “Classics Banned or Challenged” list (UConn).

According to the American Library Association, the most common reason for banning books, in order, include offensive language, sexual explicitness, and unsuitability to intended age group, violence, Satanic content, homosexuality, religious viewpoints, political viewpoints, drugs, racism, nudity, and sex education. Depending on how it is interpreted, On the Road hits at least nine or ten of the twelve points. In more conservative communities, it is to be expected that this novel is to be contested, along with the other aforementioned contested classics. Despite these controversial components to the story, which high school children have most likely been exposed to, there is more to Kerouac’s tale than sex, drugs and

road.
The entirety of On the Road was filled with sexual experiences, drugs, party scenes and profanity, but it was largely supposed to be part of a larger picture of the era the book was written during; the Beat Generation. On the Road is a compilation of social and political critiques; particularly what it meant to be a hegemonic white male and how to find yourself in spite of the blaring ordinary life you were plagued with. Jacob Haslam claims that “On the Road can be seen as a portrayal of the problems of an American romantic notion of identity that makes universal claims about the transcendental potential of the individual.” In short, this includes the aforementioned romanticized various of the wide open and spacious “American West” the Sal Paradise dreams about in addition to breaking social boundaries and beyond.
For instance, when they are on the road, Sal claims that he and Dean are “unconstrained by schedule or routine.” To that end, the road symbolizes the lack of boundaries: the social barriers that are erased simply at the sheer experience of travel and adventure. Sal found himself in many car rides with hobos, illiterate truck drivers, families, and even African-Americans. Sal transcended through social classes and racial boundaries for the rush and the thrill of being on the road, on his way to a place he’s never been and place that is better. Correspondingly, Sal and his friends eclipse the establishment of Capitalism as a whole. Though the point of the novel isn’t to condone stealing cars or spending the entirety of your money on drinking; it makes the point that often, the most important things in life aren’t having a corporate job or making money; it’s the times you have with the people who inspire you, and who you, in turn inspire. Sal states, admiringly:
“…and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..”
More than almost any other passage in the novel, that one has the ability to send shivers down the spine and goosebumps up your arms. It proves that the novel isn’t just one about success, money, or any of those trivial matters. On the Road is a timeless tale about how maybe, the mad ones are the ones who have it best, and after all, who ever said the iconic sixties were exemplified in the sane, mundane, stuffy hegemonic middle class Americans who had spark for anything but their white picket fences and a lack of anything passionate or spontaneous?
Many people believe that On the Road was void of any challenging political thoughts or substance, and to an extent, that statement is true. Kerouac didn’t seem to have many opinions on Politics, nor did he reference it very often during the novel. However, Wayne State University analyst Phillip Abbott argues that Kerouac’s work indirectly appropriates the social contract theory, which has been frequently utilized in American Political thought. The social contract theory is an old philosophical term, referring to the idea that someone’s political or moral obligations stem from their agreement that forms the society they live in. On the topic, Abbott claims that On the Road is a “severe indictment of the prosperous America of the 1950s, since Kerouac regards affluence as at best an irrelevance and at worst a corruption of American identity.” He continues to say that the consequences of following the social contract is the acceptance of conformity as the price to pay for prosperity. As a reference to a preceding point; Sal Paradise and his friends all refused to conform for success, and instead they decided to live vicariously through each other and their pursuits.
On the Road isn’t a novel without fault- however, it is my belief that there is still something to learn from some of the blaring indiscretions in Kerouac’s writing. This predominantly entails the distinct lack of strong characters of the female gender, or of any race other than white, for that matter. However, both these issues were receiving major attention in the 1960’s with the Civil Rights Act and even Martin Luther King Junior’s assignation both occurring that decade. In his tribute to On the Road’s pronounced whiteness, John Trudeau states that “throughout the novel, [Kerouac] doubles patriarchal characters… and repetitively romanticizes racial others as temporary escape heralds of transformation.” Sal undoubtedly had greater respect for women than Dean did; but both of their opinions towards them weren’t exactly respectful or with any form of decency. It is seen throughout the novel that Sal wants something more than sex; he wanted connection and feeling (though on more occasion than one, he settled for just sex). He felt that in America, “Sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk… real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.” On the contrary, Dean Moriarty constantly was at the feet of women; sleeping with Marylou while he was married to Camille and had children, abandoning each of his wives for adventure and meaningless interactions. The way he treated these women were like trash, that they could easily be discarded. Despite the fact that Sal’s entire perception of women were romanticized, he was more than willing to compromise his beliefs. This embellishes the counterculture of sexual liberation in the 1960’s: a willingness to be more open about who you were, and not feeling like you had to hide your sexual desires away from the outside world.
Continuing with the predominantly white male characters, they only time that other races were mentioned were in passing, or a slightly, if not obviously, derogatory light. The only time someone of color was mentioned was when Sal and Dean saw a black man preform jazz music, and they decided that he had “It,” then deciding it was their goal to find out what exactly “it” was. The topic was hardly mentioned again. Sal and Dean also took several trips to Mexico, and Sal even had a stint working on Mexican-run fields in Lost Angeles. Dean actually leaves Sal in a hospital after getting extremely sick off drugs and alcohol. Sal, predictably forgives Dean for leaving him when he was at his weakest. Sal’s sole reason for working in the fields is a woman, but he decides that laboring isn’t quite for him. His role model in that particular period of time is actually a man on the fields that doesn’t care to work, cons his way into a paycheck and drinks his days away; which certainly does nothing to eradicate the stereotype that Mexicans are lazy. Needless to say; Mexico isn’t exactly embodied to best during the novel.
There are apparent flaws with the novel, On the Road. Jack Kerouac took an approach to writing that was daring, boundary shattering and entirely unique to the Beat Generation. Many have critiqued this novel; mostly in a positive way, just as many have tried to understand the inner workings of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty (Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy, respectively). Though there is a constant amount of material that may be considered questionable, educators should go beyond looking at the dirty and realize that On the Road was iconic in all facets of the word. On the Road objects stigmas about casual sex, drug culture, poverty, capitalism and what it meant to be living in 1960’s America.