The Road Is Life
I wrote this research paper for my 12th grade AP English class. If you cite it or use it or whatever in your own work, be a pal and let me know, that'd be swell. Let me know what you think. It got a B+
The Road Is Life
By Zach Ogden
First published in 1957, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road is the booming voice of a lost generation and a sharp criticism of the rigid, conservative society of post-war America. Written in a three week benzedrine-fueled frenzy, Kerouac’s fluid style of prose is reflective of the jazz-driven and alcohol-soaked adventures that he and Neal Cassady — fictionalized as Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, respectively — undertook in the late 1940s. Though Kerouac’s oft-quoted and oft-misinterpreted work quickly became a bildungsroman for the counterculture that emerged in America during the 1950s and 1960s, he never identified with the social scene he is credited with creating (Aydt). The finger-snapping, beret-wearing stereotype of the members of the Beat Generation is nothing less than the polar opposite of Jack Kerouac; for him, “the Beatific was a solitary state of mind, and he satisfied his own spirituality not with hipness, but with scholarly ardor” (Aydt). While searching for himself in the jungles of Mexico and the plains of the Midwest, Sal Paradise, and therefore Kerouac, is able to learn more about and then thickly criticize the conservative and stoic society he is trying to escape.
One of the most obvious edifices of a society’s values is the nature of their police officers. Several times in On The Road, Jack Kerouac uses the police officers or sheriffs of an area to reveal the type of people that live in that particular place. For instance, in Virginia Dean, Sal and Marylou are pulled over by a police officer and taken to his station. Once at the station, they run across “a mean cop...who took an immediate dislike to Dean” (Kerouac 136). The officers in Virginia are depicted as being not only mean and rude, but stupid and nosy as well. According to Sal, the officers “tried some amateur Sherlocking by asking the same questions twice, expecting us to make a slip” (Kerouac 136). Sal even goes as far to say that America has a “Victorian police force; it peers out of musty windows and wants to inquire about everything, and can make crimes if the crimes don’t exist,” blatantly accusing the police — and by extension, America — of being antiquated, arbitrary and foolish (Kerouac 137). Through his depiction of American police, Kerouac openly criticizes the law-abiding and conformist society of the 1940s and 1950s. By contrast, when Sal and Dean enter Limón, Mexico, they find a much more laid back, yet also more genuinely concerned, police force. Parked outside the city and sprawled around their car, the ragged-looking travelers attract the attention of the local sheriff, whose “weak flashlight and mumbling to himself” is in stark contrast to the guns and aggressive, almost pompous attitudes of the Virginia police (Kerouac 294). Through Sal’s narrative, Kerouac explicitly states that “such lovely policemen God hath never wrought in America,” and that the meek sheriff of Limón had “no suspicions, no fuss, no bother: he was the guardian of the sleeping town, period” (Kerouac 294). The sheriff of Limón is the antithesis of the police of America, and through his gentle, genuine manner towards Dean and Sal, brings to light what Kerouac believes to be the oppressive nature of American police, which is reflective of American society as a whole. By accepting a tyrannical police force, the blame for their abuses of power — as seen when one of the Virginia policemen threatens Dean with a “special,” made up charge — lays equally on the shoulders of American society (Kerouac 136).
Throughout On The Road, Jack Kerouac develops the metaphors of the East and the West to symbolize the gap in thought between Kerouac and his gang of friends and mainstream American society. The East, primarily New York City and Northern Virginia, is representative of the traditional, conservative America that both Kerouac and Sal desperately try and escape. Through Salvatore Paradise’s narrative, Kerouac develops the metaphor of the East in two ways. The first of these ways is through describing eastern scenery. While in Washington D.C., Sal witnesses “great displays of war might...lined up along Pennsylvania Avenue...all kinds of war material that looked murderous in the snowy grass” (Kerouac 135). Secondly, Kerouac develops a series of minor characters to deprecate the people and ideas of the East. It is the two Jesuit schoolboys that Sal and Dean pick up in their limousine that epitomize the boring, cold persona that Kerouac tries to identify with mainstream American society. Sal describes them as “full of corny quips and Eastern college talk and had nothing on their bird-beans [sic] except a lot of ill-understood Aquinas,” all in all two empty vessels with no excitement at all (Kerouac 228). It is this very type of person and atmosphere that Sal flees, just as Kerouac himself did (Raskin). Sal’s desire to get away from the scenery and people of the East leads him through his journeys across America and sets the tone for the novel as a whole.
Instead of the boring, dreary eastern types, Sal flocks towards people like Dean Moriarty, who he describes as “a sideburned hero of the snowy West,” and faraway places like Denver and San Francisco (Kerouac 2). These people and places are far away from his “half finished manuscript” and other responsibilities that come with being at home (Kerouac 107). For both Kerouac and his brainchild Salvatore, the West represents fresh ideas, excitement, and the shedding of responsibility to anyone other than oneself (“Kerouac’s”). This excitement extends beyond Sal, who tells that at a party, the host, Tom Saybrook, becomes enamored with Sal’s friends from the West. Tom, who is “overjoyed” with Sal’s friends, asks “Sal, where did you find these absolutely wonderful people? I’ve never seen anyone like them,” to which Sal replies bluntly “I found them in the West” (Kerouac 125). Tom, who is described as a “sad, handsome fellow...generous...only once in a while he suddenly has fits of depression and rushes off,” personifies the America of the 1940s and the reaction that mainstream society was having to Sal Paradise-type people, and the reaction that society would eventually have to Kerouac’s novel (Kerouac 125). To Sal, the West is all things new and foreign, and this is true to such an extent that Sal and Dean’s journey “West” makes its final and most important stop in Mexico City. Furthermore, the West represents an escape from the dreadful responsibilities of today with the promise of more exciting things waiting just beyond the horizon (“Kerouac’s”). The West is an escape from the feeling of lost restlessness as well as an escape from a country and a culture that has found itself lost among the economic boom of the 1940s and 1950s.
Throughout On The Road are minor characters that represent the directionless wandering that Kerouac saw in post-war America. One of these characters is a young woman Sal meets on a bus ride to Detroit, who he describes as “a gorgeous country girl wearing a low-cut cotton blouse that displayed the beautiful sun-tan on her breast tops” (Kerouac 244). However, inasmuch as she is beautiful, Sal notes quite brusquely that “she was dull” (Kerouac 244). Just like post-war America, with its glittering new cars and beautiful suburban homes, the girl is incredibly beautiful on the outside but boring and empty on the inside. She speaks of typically American things, grossly unimportant trivialities, and “[mumbles] of jobs, movies, [and] going to her grandmother’s” (Kerouac 244). Sal presses her for more exciting and important things, he asks her “What do you want out of life...what is [your father] aching to do...what do we want?” (Kerouac 245). Sal prods the girl for what she truly wants out of life just as Kerouac prodded America, and just like the author that crafted him, Sal finds nothing. “She was sleepy,” Sal says. “She was eighteen and most lovely, and lost” (Kerouac 245). Eighteen, an age characterized by both independence and immaturity, accurately describes not only the girl but America as well. By the late 1940s, America had established itself as a world power, a true player in international policy for the first time. However, though America had established its place and finally achieved recognition as a country with an important opinion, it had not yet discovered its true meaning. America had not — and to a lesser extent, still has not — found its culture and its niche in the world. America was, in fact, a teenager among the mature adult nations of Europe and Asia, aimless and looking for itself.
Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, first published in 1957, is the booming voice of a lost generation and a sharp criticism of the rigid, conservative society of post-war America. Through the extended metaphors of East and West, regional comparison of police forces, and the metaphor of America as a lost, lonely teenager, Kerouac not only crafts a story that is pleasing on a superficial level, but also articulates a much deeper meaning. Beneath the entertaining story of two young men traveling together cross-country is the tale of a society that is lost and wandering, searching for its place in the world just as Sal and Dean are. It is this wandering and purposeless meandering that Kerouac is most critical of, for it seems that the people of America, as characterized by the young country girl on the bus to Detroit, know not what they want, nor that they want anything at all. For Kerouac, the road represents this never-ending search for purpose and meaning. Nothing else is important besides traveling on the road to reach the ever-elusive metaphorical West, the West that he cannot find once he reaches the ocean in San Francisco nor in the jungles near Mexico City. It is this definitive purpose that neither Sal nor he ever find, but as Sal says, “no matter, the road is life” (Kerouac 212). Through his proxy Sal, Kerouac articulates that he realizes that purpose can never be found, because it only truly exists at the conclusion of a road that has no real end.
References [My original formatting didn't transfer over into blogspot and I don't feel like fixing it.]
Aydt, R (2007 October 24). Jack Kerouac: On the road again. Retrieved March 16, 2008, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1674965,00.html?imw=Y
Anonymous (2007, October 5). The last psychiatrist: Kerouac's on the road: The 50th anniversary of a book I had not read. Retrieved March 16, 2008, from http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/10/kerouacs_on_the_road.html
Raskin, J (2007, July 12). Kings of the road. Retrieved March 16, 2008, from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/raskin/2
Kerouac, J (2003). On the road (5th ed.). New York City: The Penguin Group.
The Road Is Life
By Zach Ogden
First published in 1957, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road is the booming voice of a lost generation and a sharp criticism of the rigid, conservative society of post-war America. Written in a three week benzedrine-fueled frenzy, Kerouac’s fluid style of prose is reflective of the jazz-driven and alcohol-soaked adventures that he and Neal Cassady — fictionalized as Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, respectively — undertook in the late 1940s. Though Kerouac’s oft-quoted and oft-misinterpreted work quickly became a bildungsroman for the counterculture that emerged in America during the 1950s and 1960s, he never identified with the social scene he is credited with creating (Aydt). The finger-snapping, beret-wearing stereotype of the members of the Beat Generation is nothing less than the polar opposite of Jack Kerouac; for him, “the Beatific was a solitary state of mind, and he satisfied his own spirituality not with hipness, but with scholarly ardor” (Aydt). While searching for himself in the jungles of Mexico and the plains of the Midwest, Sal Paradise, and therefore Kerouac, is able to learn more about and then thickly criticize the conservative and stoic society he is trying to escape.
One of the most obvious edifices of a society’s values is the nature of their police officers. Several times in On The Road, Jack Kerouac uses the police officers or sheriffs of an area to reveal the type of people that live in that particular place. For instance, in Virginia Dean, Sal and Marylou are pulled over by a police officer and taken to his station. Once at the station, they run across “a mean cop...who took an immediate dislike to Dean” (Kerouac 136). The officers in Virginia are depicted as being not only mean and rude, but stupid and nosy as well. According to Sal, the officers “tried some amateur Sherlocking by asking the same questions twice, expecting us to make a slip” (Kerouac 136). Sal even goes as far to say that America has a “Victorian police force; it peers out of musty windows and wants to inquire about everything, and can make crimes if the crimes don’t exist,” blatantly accusing the police — and by extension, America — of being antiquated, arbitrary and foolish (Kerouac 137). Through his depiction of American police, Kerouac openly criticizes the law-abiding and conformist society of the 1940s and 1950s. By contrast, when Sal and Dean enter Limón, Mexico, they find a much more laid back, yet also more genuinely concerned, police force. Parked outside the city and sprawled around their car, the ragged-looking travelers attract the attention of the local sheriff, whose “weak flashlight and mumbling to himself” is in stark contrast to the guns and aggressive, almost pompous attitudes of the Virginia police (Kerouac 294). Through Sal’s narrative, Kerouac explicitly states that “such lovely policemen God hath never wrought in America,” and that the meek sheriff of Limón had “no suspicions, no fuss, no bother: he was the guardian of the sleeping town, period” (Kerouac 294). The sheriff of Limón is the antithesis of the police of America, and through his gentle, genuine manner towards Dean and Sal, brings to light what Kerouac believes to be the oppressive nature of American police, which is reflective of American society as a whole. By accepting a tyrannical police force, the blame for their abuses of power — as seen when one of the Virginia policemen threatens Dean with a “special,” made up charge — lays equally on the shoulders of American society (Kerouac 136).
Throughout On The Road, Jack Kerouac develops the metaphors of the East and the West to symbolize the gap in thought between Kerouac and his gang of friends and mainstream American society. The East, primarily New York City and Northern Virginia, is representative of the traditional, conservative America that both Kerouac and Sal desperately try and escape. Through Salvatore Paradise’s narrative, Kerouac develops the metaphor of the East in two ways. The first of these ways is through describing eastern scenery. While in Washington D.C., Sal witnesses “great displays of war might...lined up along Pennsylvania Avenue...all kinds of war material that looked murderous in the snowy grass” (Kerouac 135). Secondly, Kerouac develops a series of minor characters to deprecate the people and ideas of the East. It is the two Jesuit schoolboys that Sal and Dean pick up in their limousine that epitomize the boring, cold persona that Kerouac tries to identify with mainstream American society. Sal describes them as “full of corny quips and Eastern college talk and had nothing on their bird-beans [sic] except a lot of ill-understood Aquinas,” all in all two empty vessels with no excitement at all (Kerouac 228). It is this very type of person and atmosphere that Sal flees, just as Kerouac himself did (Raskin). Sal’s desire to get away from the scenery and people of the East leads him through his journeys across America and sets the tone for the novel as a whole.
Instead of the boring, dreary eastern types, Sal flocks towards people like Dean Moriarty, who he describes as “a sideburned hero of the snowy West,” and faraway places like Denver and San Francisco (Kerouac 2). These people and places are far away from his “half finished manuscript” and other responsibilities that come with being at home (Kerouac 107). For both Kerouac and his brainchild Salvatore, the West represents fresh ideas, excitement, and the shedding of responsibility to anyone other than oneself (“Kerouac’s”). This excitement extends beyond Sal, who tells that at a party, the host, Tom Saybrook, becomes enamored with Sal’s friends from the West. Tom, who is “overjoyed” with Sal’s friends, asks “Sal, where did you find these absolutely wonderful people? I’ve never seen anyone like them,” to which Sal replies bluntly “I found them in the West” (Kerouac 125). Tom, who is described as a “sad, handsome fellow...generous...only once in a while he suddenly has fits of depression and rushes off,” personifies the America of the 1940s and the reaction that mainstream society was having to Sal Paradise-type people, and the reaction that society would eventually have to Kerouac’s novel (Kerouac 125). To Sal, the West is all things new and foreign, and this is true to such an extent that Sal and Dean’s journey “West” makes its final and most important stop in Mexico City. Furthermore, the West represents an escape from the dreadful responsibilities of today with the promise of more exciting things waiting just beyond the horizon (“Kerouac’s”). The West is an escape from the feeling of lost restlessness as well as an escape from a country and a culture that has found itself lost among the economic boom of the 1940s and 1950s.
Throughout On The Road are minor characters that represent the directionless wandering that Kerouac saw in post-war America. One of these characters is a young woman Sal meets on a bus ride to Detroit, who he describes as “a gorgeous country girl wearing a low-cut cotton blouse that displayed the beautiful sun-tan on her breast tops” (Kerouac 244). However, inasmuch as she is beautiful, Sal notes quite brusquely that “she was dull” (Kerouac 244). Just like post-war America, with its glittering new cars and beautiful suburban homes, the girl is incredibly beautiful on the outside but boring and empty on the inside. She speaks of typically American things, grossly unimportant trivialities, and “[mumbles] of jobs, movies, [and] going to her grandmother’s” (Kerouac 244). Sal presses her for more exciting and important things, he asks her “What do you want out of life...what is [your father] aching to do...what do we want?” (Kerouac 245). Sal prods the girl for what she truly wants out of life just as Kerouac prodded America, and just like the author that crafted him, Sal finds nothing. “She was sleepy,” Sal says. “She was eighteen and most lovely, and lost” (Kerouac 245). Eighteen, an age characterized by both independence and immaturity, accurately describes not only the girl but America as well. By the late 1940s, America had established itself as a world power, a true player in international policy for the first time. However, though America had established its place and finally achieved recognition as a country with an important opinion, it had not yet discovered its true meaning. America had not — and to a lesser extent, still has not — found its culture and its niche in the world. America was, in fact, a teenager among the mature adult nations of Europe and Asia, aimless and looking for itself.
Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, first published in 1957, is the booming voice of a lost generation and a sharp criticism of the rigid, conservative society of post-war America. Through the extended metaphors of East and West, regional comparison of police forces, and the metaphor of America as a lost, lonely teenager, Kerouac not only crafts a story that is pleasing on a superficial level, but also articulates a much deeper meaning. Beneath the entertaining story of two young men traveling together cross-country is the tale of a society that is lost and wandering, searching for its place in the world just as Sal and Dean are. It is this wandering and purposeless meandering that Kerouac is most critical of, for it seems that the people of America, as characterized by the young country girl on the bus to Detroit, know not what they want, nor that they want anything at all. For Kerouac, the road represents this never-ending search for purpose and meaning. Nothing else is important besides traveling on the road to reach the ever-elusive metaphorical West, the West that he cannot find once he reaches the ocean in San Francisco nor in the jungles near Mexico City. It is this definitive purpose that neither Sal nor he ever find, but as Sal says, “no matter, the road is life” (Kerouac 212). Through his proxy Sal, Kerouac articulates that he realizes that purpose can never be found, because it only truly exists at the conclusion of a road that has no real end.
References [My original formatting didn't transfer over into blogspot and I don't feel like fixing it.]
Aydt, R (2007 October 24). Jack Kerouac: On the road again. Retrieved March 16, 2008, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1674965,00.html?imw=Y
Anonymous (2007, October 5). The last psychiatrist: Kerouac's on the road: The 50th anniversary of a book I had not read. Retrieved March 16, 2008, from http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/10/kerouacs_on_the_road.html
Raskin, J (2007, July 12). Kings of the road. Retrieved March 16, 2008, from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/raskin/2
Kerouac, J (2003). On the road (5th ed.). New York City: The Penguin Group.
posted by Zach Ogden at 11:42 PM
0 comments
links to this post
