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The Philosophical Breakdown of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”
The 1940’s was a hectic time period that spawned many different movements due to society's hunger for change. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was a novel inspired by the his own experiences. His life, time period, and philosophy are all woven into his piece. In “On the Road”, Kerouac uses his life experiences to weave an intricate story that kick started the Beat Movement by inspiring an entire generation to live life to the fullest.
It is important to understand the complexity of Kerouac’s life in order to interpret On the Road. Jack Kerouac was originally born Jean- Louis on March 12th, 1922. His father was from New Hampshire and his mother was an emigrant from Quebec. He had two other
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The main character in On the Road, Sal, is the alter ego of Kerouac. The author’s own insanity can be seen even as he wrote his story, “He wrote the entire Novel over one three-week bender of frenzied composition on a single scroll of paper that was 120 feet long”(Jack). Another protagonist, Dean Moriarty, was inspired by a Neal Cassady that Kerouac met during his early life. Cassady is described as “an uneducated drifter and a manic depressive with a magnetic personality”(Literary Themes for Students). This is parallel to Dean Moriarty's personality in On the Road. Kerouac heavily based Dean off of Neal Cassady because of the influence he had on his life. “Neal Cassady (AKA Dean Moriarty) claimed to have stolen 500 cars between ages of 14-21. He emerged from Juvenile Penitentiary searching for something new” (“On the Road”). Much like Dean, Cassady was seen as a wildcard, “Kerouac knocked at the door to a sleazy flat in Harlem and Neal Cassady opened the door, naked, while a beautiful girl groped for clothes”(Soitos). Kerouac takes details from his own past and harnesses them to write his own …show more content…
Eventually the Cold War put forced fear into the American public. The politics of paranoia left the public thinking less of the government. The Cold War lingers in Kerouac’s On the Road (“On the Road”). During this time period the public became open to trying more things in life and vastly adopted the Beat Movement. It was widely accepted that, “Kerouac and the Beats have been recognized for their critique of the conformity and consumerism associated with the postwar American culture” (Vredenburg). The overall time period was not afraid to try new things and would willingly go out of their way to party, do drugs, and have sex. This was highly inappropriate for the younger generation to have sexual relations without a spouse. This new lifestyle appalled the older generation and separated the people. There was a generational split. The time period’s language can be described as unique. The author uses his own time periods linguistics to paint a vivid picture of the protagonists adventure, “Then here came a gang of young bop musicians carrying their instruments out of cars. They piled right into a saloon and we followed them”(Kerouac 227). Kerouac’s inclusion of local color and basic understanding of the time period, allows the story to come to
Kerouac also reflects on the futile trap of materialism. Japhy discusses "all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least fancy new cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.
Tallman, Warren. "Kerouac's Sound." Casebook on the Beat. Thomas Parkinson, ed. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1961. 220-221.
Tytell, John. "The Beat Generation and the Continuing American Revolution". American Scholar 42 (1973): 308-317.
In Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, the narrator, Sal Paradise offers up to us what seems to be a very optimistic view on life. He is forever singing the praises of how wonderful his adventures will be and his high expectations for the future. To Sal, the novel is defined by youthful exuberance and unabashed optimism for the new experiences that he sets out to find. A deeper look into the novel, as well as a look at some of the critics who have written on it, reveals a much darker side, a more pessimistic and sad aspect that Sal simply fails to realize until the very close of the action. Whether Sal is hopping up on the optimism of jazz music, secure in his belief that he is off to find ‘IT,’ or just excited about the promises of a night out in a new city, he is consistently selling the reader on the positive nature of the situation.
In Jack Kerouac's On The Road, Sal Paradise is a man who was fed up with his life and what was expected of him. He was no longer content to sit around and allow society to dictate to him whom he should be and how he should act. It was at this time in his life that Sal met Dean Moriarty who saw that he was ripe for influence. Sal didn't necessarily know exactly what he wanted, but he knew he needed change. Dean became his "guru" in that Sal knew that Dean would teach him about life and lead him on great adventures that would help him discover the world around him and what he wanted out of it. Sal was ready for something more. He comes to this realization while riding on the bus with Dean through the Lincoln Tunnel.
In an attempt to overcome writers’ block, Jack Kerouac, alongside Neal Cassady, explored the American West in a series of adventures that spanned from 1947 to 1950. On the Road is the “lovechild” of Kerouac and Cassady’s escapades, fueled by jazz, poetry, and drug use. Its political and aesthetic dimensions are thoroughly complex, yet intertwined. On the Road portrays the story of a personal quest in search of meaning and belonging in a time when conformity was praised and outsiders were scorned. It was during this ...
The United States, during the 1960’s was a very progressive time for our country; the way people lived there life changed dramatically and has not been the same since. The sixties counterculture is the leading role in this progressive time period; from a wide spread of drug use, to the British invasion of music, and very importantly, feminism. After the Korean War, the CIA came across information that prisoners were being brainwashed with a “truth serum.” They acted quickly and started during human research; the research was called MKULTRA. They gave LSD and other hallucinogens to their test subjects. After the research was finished, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, started doing testing of their own; this testing included close friends and family. The popularization came from their, acid tests, which included many more people. Following the new drug scene, it played an important role in music. The sixties changed the classical rock the new psychedelic rock. This new form of music came from the drug use and people wanting art music, versus the normal rock. The first large wave of feminism came from the flappers; in the sixties the second wave came and it was larger...
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.
In pre-Beat Generation America, anyone who looked could find a whole society of people who, for the most part, were afraid to do the things they dreamed, unable to break from conformity. Kerouac saw this all around him, and with On the Road, he responds. He presents a tale of those who flee conformity successfully and without any significant negative consequences. Clearly, his audience consists of members of society who remain content with conventional societal norms, who are too squeamish to do what they want. To them he argues that they ought to assert their personal identity rather than be bound by an imposed social one, that they ought to follow their own desires rather than succumb to society's.
As the writer waits at the station for his bus, he takes notice of his surroundings and the people around him, especially a lady with a bologna sandwich on her head. He begins this journey on Greyhound stage one: hope. He notices a sign taking about the future Greyhound Buses before he boards his own bus. Once on the bus Key talks about stage two: concern. He describes the passengers around him and his pirate driver.
288-293. ed. a. Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Kerouac, Jack.
In Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’, the protagonists embark upon a long, arduous quest for human identity. Their aim is to uncover who they truly are, where they fit in the ‘scheme of things’ and what the meaning of life is. They articulate this desire by speaking, during the novel, of the search for ‘IT’, ‘IT’ being human identity. This ‘IT’ is an intangible thing; something that holds a different meaning for every individual. It encompasses all the things humans yearn for – life answers, the meaning of the universe, happiness, enlightenment, self-fulfilment, ‘beatification’ (as articulated by Kerouac). ‘On the Road’ is the story of a desperate search for ‘IT’, in which the protagonists finally come to realise that ‘IT’ is unattainable and time cannot be defied.
In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in the post-apocalyptic world that the man and the boy live in, dreams begin to take on the form of a new “reality.” As the novel progresses, the man’s dreams, initially memories remnant of his pre-apocalypse life, become “brighter” as the boy’s dreams become darker and nightmarish. Through the use of color and distinct language, McCarthy emphasizes the contrast between reality and dreams. The man’s reliance on bad dreams to keep him tied to the harsh reality alludes to the hopelessness of the situation; he can never truly escape. McCarthy suggests that those who strive for a life that no longer exists are deluded with false hope. Having dreams is a natural human tendency, but in a world that has become so inhumane, the man can’t even afford to retain this element of being human. The loss of the past is a concept that the characters living in this ashen world struggle with, and McCarthy presents memory as a weakness to be exploited.
Jack Kerouac, the author of On the Road, was a French American man that was born in America. This novel follows Kerouac’s character, Sal, and his friends as they travel through America. Kerouac’s novel is an autoethnographic piece of writing. The autoethnography in the writing shapes the novel into a study of Kerouac’s life and personal experiences through his characters. By writing this novel, the readers are able to see what Kerouac experienced in America.
The nineteen fifties was a decade of prosperous times in America, but the average lifestyle of an American seemed extremely dull. The average American conformed to social norms, most Americans in the nineteen fifties dressed alike, talked the same way, and seemed to have the same types of personality. Music is what started to change the conformist lifestyle in America. Teenagers started to rebellion against their families by listening to Rock-n-Roll...