Dean Moriarty Essays

  • Importance of Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road

    3042 Words  | 7 Pages

    Importance of Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road It is Dean Moriarty, in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, who represents the eternal flame of youth that was adopted by the rebellious youth culture of the Beat Generation. He is free from responsibility, “simply a youth tremendously excited with life…want[ing] so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him” (Kerouac 4). Just as the Greek of the Olympics, “with [the] torch…[that] ignites the pagan

  • Jack Kerouac’s On The Road - The Character of Dean Moriarty

    2008 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Character of Dean Moriarty in On the Road Part two of Jack Kerouac's novel, On the Road, gives the reader, for the first time, a close look at the character Dean Moriarty. This section of the novel begins when Dean, his ex-wife Marylou, and his friend Ed, meet up with his closer friend, Sal, at Sal's brother's house in Virginia. Sal had not seen Dean for over a year when they suddenly show up on the doorstep. Sal sums up their tale by saying, "So now Dean had come about four thousand miles

  • On the Road: Jack Kerouac's Rejection of the Middle Class American Dream

    1600 Words  | 4 Pages

    travelling companion is Dean Moriarty, a reckless and hyperactive womanizer who, to Sal, is the phy... ... middle of paper ... ...tual values but also a search for a personal identity that had been lost or maybe had never even existed in the first place. In On the Road, the narrator, Sal Paradise, recounts the details of a search that, ultimately, is not rewarded. Sal's infatuation with Dean Moriarty leads him only to a parting of the ways. When he is abandoned by Dean, whilst seriously ill in

  • Jack Kerouac's On The Road

    526 Words  | 2 Pages

    exists today in parts of the west. The road led them to new places and people with different views and cultures and this is a prime example of what most people had the desire to do during that era, expand their horizons.Kerouac along with friends, Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise, combed America from New York to California and from Mexico to Colorado, describing their experiences along the way. From the jazz clubs in New Orleans to the whorehouses in Mexico, their experiences in the places and with the

  • Narrator's Role in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Kerouac's On The Road

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    the time, but nothing binds the novels closer to one another than the authors’ use of the first person narrative and that narrators relationship with their leading character. It is perhaps the most common reading to see both Jay Gatsby and Dean Moriarty awarded iconic status by their corresponding narrators. The connotations concerning the epithet found in the very centre of Fitzgerald’s title alone can bring an image to the reader’s mind of one of history’s great leaders, putting Gatsby in

  • On The Road: American Dream

    976 Words  | 2 Pages

    the road- the beats. They saw the mainstream life as a prison. In “On the road”, Jack Kerouac deli... ... middle of paper ... ...eam represents the portrayal of a counter culture, a beat generation longing for freedom and a pursuit of happiness. Dean`s character is a great paradigm for what the counter culture stands for, be it positive or negative. More so, Sal`s identification with the African-Americans and the Mexicans represent his recognition of a racial minority that is marginalized and

  • Jack Kerouac’s On The Road - The Spiritual Quest, the Search for Self and Identity

    1323 Words  | 3 Pages

    home, a job, or a wife. Instead, he longs for a mental utopia offered by Dean Moriarty. This object of his brotherly love grew up in the streets of America. Through the hardships of continuously being shuffled from city to city, Dean has encompassed what is and what is not important in life. While driving back to Testament in the '49 Hudson, Dean propositions Sal through an appeal to emotion. In passing on his philosophy, Dean eloquently states, "Everything is fine, God exists, we know time" (Kerouac

  • Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Kerouac’s On the Road – The River and the Road

    3045 Words  | 7 Pages

    Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Kerouac’s On the Road – The River and the Road One element that separates a good novel from a great novel is its enduring effects on society. A great novel transcends time; it changes and mirrors the consciousness of a civilization. One such novel is Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For the past one hundred and fifteen years, it has remained in print and has been one of the most widely studied texts in high schools and colleges. According to Lionel Trilling

  • Quest for Self and Identity in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road

    1329 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Quest For Identity In On The Road 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

  • You Don't Want Freedom: An Analysis of Sal Paradise's Real Desires

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    the image that he was trying to escape from: another American following the typical "day in the life," living with a false sense of what the "American dream" really is Sal meets a friend early on, Dean Moriarty, whom Sal admires greatly for his seemingly careless attitude and sense for adventure. Dean seems likes the perfect travel companion for Sal, it's whom he wants to be more like. The journey starts off already contradicting its own purpose. Why would one person leave their home and friends

  • Sal's Search for "IT" in "On the Road"

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    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. ."..I was

  • Discovering the Road with Steinbeck and Kerouac

    1408 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although ten years separated their respective journeys, Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck expressed similar views in their road narratives. They focused on the rapidly evolving American societal landscape, while using the theme of mobility as a “central structural metaphor” (Cresswell). That is, both authors used exploration through time and movement as a Modernist method of alignment with their exploration of American society. Kerouac and Steinbeck, despite a significant gap in age, were also united

  • The Search For Happiness In Jack Kerouac's On The Road

    1535 Words  | 4 Pages

    directly related to happiness. Happiness comes from the simple pleasures in life: having a family, being nice to people, a walk through nature, being loved, the list goes on and on. Does money buy any of these things? No. One the other hand, Sal and Deans problems with finding happiness IS a direct result of not being content, constantly feeling like you need something more, and not being satisfied with your own self being. Just remember, happiness is not a constant thing, and money can’t buy it. Your

  • A Feminist Perspective of On the Road and The First Third

    654 Words  | 2 Pages

    Much has been written about the Beat generation, especially about the hold its radical freedom has exerted on the American imagination. The Beats who stand out in most of our minds are men and the freedom they enjoyed--a freedom of movement, of creativity, of sexuality--is coded as a particularly male kind of freedom. My paper will suggest that in their autobiographical texts On the Road and The First Third Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady construct a travelling masculinity in an attempt to escape bourgeois

  • On the Roads optimism

    2855 Words  | 6 Pages

    himself supported this idea when he decided to draw away from the world of "beat" of which many consider him the creator. Kerouac’s movement in his life away from the beat lifestyle seems to suggest that, much like Sal’s departure from the life of Dean at the end of the novel, he has experienced the depression of the world and if others do not realize it, he can no longer be a part of it.

  • Point of View in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

    2247 Words  | 5 Pages

    hallucination, when an Indian came to him (Tanner 21). While his choice of the Indian, a supposed deaf mute, as narrator seems out of the norm it is even more so when comparing Kesey to the other Beat writers. McMurphy can be compared closely to Dean Moriarty of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, but Bromden is nothing like Kerouac's narrator, Sal Paradise. Certainly the loud and boisterous McMurphy would have made for an interesting narrator for this novel but this would have provided for a very different

  • Sali Herman Essay

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sali Herman is an Australian artist, although born in Switzerland. He painted the painting “Near the Docks” in 1949. 2. Research background information about the artist and their life Sali Herman was born in 1898 in Zurich, Switzerland as the eleventh of eighteen children. As a child, Herman was interested in painting and drew constantly. Eventually he had to give up on his dream to help support his family in working in a glove shop after his father's death in 1914. Later that year, Herman’s family

  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac

    540 Words  | 2 Pages

    novelist who lives with his aunt in New Jersey. Sal’s best friend is Dean Moriarty. Sal idolizes Dean for his laidback cowboy style, his ease with women, and his all around joy in living. Over the course of the book, Dean marries, divorces, makes love to, and impregnates numerous women. Sal is considerably less promiscuous, but he doesn’t seem to hold women in any higher of a light than Dean does. To Sal and Dean, on their journey for a greater understanding of themselves, and life, women

  • Impact of Dean on Sal's Identity in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Impact of Dean on Sal's Identity in On the Road On The Road begins with the protagonist, Sal, (representative of author Jack Kerouac), being overwhelmed by feelings of confusion and uncertainty regarding his personal identity. He then meets ‘Dean Moriarty’, an eccentric character who rejects societal values and ‘norms’. Sal is absorbed with and entranced by Dean, perceiving him as almost ‘superhuman’, and decides to follow him across the country. A passive character, Sal soon becomes dependent

  • Jack Kerouac’s On The Road - The Impact of Dean on Sal's Identity

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    Impact of Dean on Sal's Identity in On the Road In part I, chapter 3 of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Sal arrives at Des Moines and checks into a cheap, dirty motel room. He sleeps all day and awakens in time to witness the setting sun. As he looks around the unfamiliar room, Sal realizes that he doesn't understand his own identity. Identity lost, he states "I was half way across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future." He has lost the calming influence