On The Road, the most famous of Jack Kerouac's works, is not only the soul of the Beat movement and literature, but one of the most important novels of the century The legendary movement known as the Beat Generation exploded into American realization with two books in the late 1950s. Jack Kerouac's On the Road, published in 1957, six years after its completion, was viewed as nothing less than a proposal for the Beat Generation. When it was published, the New York Times gave it a rave appraisal and the book rose to number seven on the best-seller list. In his New York Times review, Gilbert Millstein proclaimed that the book's publication was indeed a "historic occasion." Millstein truthfully foresaw that many other critics would not agree. Indeed, the critics were divided; some, like Millstein, thought the book was astonishingly original. Others, like Norman Podhoretz, claimed that the novel was an adolescent, even jumbled, work. There were also critics somewhere in the middle who believed that although Kerouac exhibited flicker of true flair in the book, the novel as a whole had too many weak points to be considered a masterpiece. The book, which would probably be considered, rather disciplined today, stunned readers in 1957 with its portrayal of the use of drugs and immoral sex. On The Road is thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac's real life friends, lovers, and fellow travelers. Narrated by Sal Paradise, one of Kerouac's alter-egos, On the Road is a cross-country bohemian odyssey that not only influenced writing in the years since its 1957 publication but penetrated into the deepest levels of American thought and culture. First published in 1957, Kerouac's perennially hot story continues to express the restless energy and desire for freedom that makes people rush out to see the world.
On the Road is the story of two young men, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, who travels madly back and forth across the American continent, usually broke, trying to find themselves in quest of thrills. They experience life and lifestyles new to them and savor every moment. Every character they encounter touches their lives in some way, and adds greatly to this story. In the first part, Sal Paradise, the narrator, who is a young writer living with his aunt in Paterson, New Jersey, during the late 1940s. Sal is writing his first novel as he recovers from a disastrous marriage In the beginning of part one, Sal describe how he comes to meet a charming, exciting wanderer and con artist from Denver by the name of Dean Moriarty. Dean, the reform school runaway who specializes in stealing cars, is Sal's mentor. And it is the automobile that is their chariot, which keeps them relentlessly in motion. Dean's madness is overestimated, as is his ability to do whatever he pleases. There are a lot of drugs in the book, but liquor seems to be their drug of choice. They leave the heroin for a character loosely based on the real William Burroughs. Women drift in and out of the story, usually as one of Dean's lovers who he treats terribly. Dean treats everyone terribly though, abandoning Sal on several occasions, once while Sal was suffering from dysentery while they were in Mexico. Sal, however, always forgives Dean, seeing him as a god-like hero, no matter what he does. During his conquest he meets a lot of other people out of which he be friends Carlo Marx, a New York City poet, whom later on Sal introduces to Dean who later becomes close friends as well. Carlo follows Dean to Denver near the beginning of the book. Sal at first sees Dean as a hero, a role model, but slowly grows disillusioned with broken promises, ragged lies, irresponsible behavior, and eventual deceit and betrayal. The whole story is focused on Sal and Dean, and just as the two go off on a departure down into Mexico and on into Central America, it seems analogous as to how Sal's vision become blurred and misdirected in following an schema he mistakenly believes to be his own.
Sal's curiosity is first irked when he reads the interesting, animated letters that Dean wrote during his stay in a New Mexico detention center to their mutual friend Chad King. By the time Dean arrives in New York City with his child bride, Marylou, Sal is anxious to meet him. Sal describes Dean as "trim, thin-hipped, blue-eyed, with a real Oklahoma accent—a side burned hero of the snowy West. Soon after the two young men meet, Dean leaves Marylou when she files a false police report after an argument. Then Sal introduces Camille. Camille is Dean's second wife. Dean meets her in Denver and divorces Marylou to marry her. They end up living in San Francisco and having children. Dean regularly leaves her to go on the road. At one point, she throws him out of the house shortly after Sal arrives in San Francisco . Dean later divorces her to marry Inez, but he later returns to her and then continues west by himself, working as a fieldworker in California for awhile, among other things. The next year, Dean comes east to Sal again, foiling Sal's stable life once more, and they drive west together. Through all of this constant movement, there is an assortment of colorful characters, shifting landscapes, dramas, and personal growth. Dean, a big womanizer, will have three wives and four children in the course of these three years. Perceptive Sal, who at the beginning is weakened and depressed, gains in joy and confidence and finds love at the end. At first Sal is intrigued by Dean because Dean seems to have the active, spontaneous passion that Sal lacks, but they turn out to have a lot more in common.
Mexico City is the end of Sal and Dean's agitated wanderings together. Past Gregoria, they have gotten out of their element. They no longer feel all- espousal humanity with the people they see, but uneasiness and differences. The alien-ness of the places forces Sal to observe clearly, neutrally, and the descriptions in this section, free from his usual biases, are quite vibrant. The air in the Limon jungle has an "unimaginable" softness, and life is "dense, dark and ancient", observations with more depth than his earlier descriptions (of life "pure," "primitive").
Dean commented earlier that he did not drive the road in Mexico , the road drove him, and indeed they are at the mercy of the landscape. The headlights don't work, and then, lying in the humidity and heat and bugs, Sal has a sensation of becoming part of the atmosphere. As the road represents the thrill of movement, the car represents Sal and Dean's dream of freedom; Dean imagines that they could drive anywhere in the world. Sal says that Dean's "soul" is wrapped up in a car, a coast to reach, and a woman at the end of the road. It is a delight of anonymity and indistinctness, fueled not by wandering pointlessly, but by the idea of speeding toward a new future: an ideal woman waiting, a place where all of their problems will be magically solved. Everything, including them, can be remade while on the road. Just as they can visualize their goal to be ideal, they can act as their idyllic selves. The music in the book, the sound of the Saxophones embodies Sal and Dean's thoughts and emotions: eruptions of sound joyous and melancholy, messy and slow, improvised solos. They are voices from the edge speaking for a new era, apart from the old structures. Melodies are found and lost, found again, and lost again.
The dream and romance of the road has gone and been replaced with something deeper, darker and more complex. Dean doesn't stick around for that, and leaves Sal sick in Mexico City, making Sal realize once and for all the limits of their friendship. In the end, their positions have changed. Sal is strong, confident, in love, and Dean is incoherent and lost. Still, he loves Dean. Dean is the falling star Sal was chasing; Sal will always remember and value the star at its apex, when it presided over a whole world.
One flaw in the book is that Kerouac doesn't seem to be able to show how Moriarty changes and develops during the course of the book. Instead, he just announces at different intervals that Moriarty has changed, announcements that are completely unsupported by the narrative.
On the Road gave voice to a rising, discontented fringe of the young generation of the late forties and early fifties. It was after the Great Depression and World War II and more than a decade before the Civil Rights movement and the chaos of the '60s. Yet, though it has been fifty years since the events in On the Road, the feelings, ideas, and experiences in the novel are still remarkably fresh as expressions of restless, idealistic youth who crave for something more than the tasteless conventionality of a generally flourishing society. |