"On The Road"
On the Road is a novel that makes the reader want to go out there,seize the day,and live,live,live!Jack Kerouac creator of the "beat generation" best sums up his philosophy as "everything belongs to me because i am poor".The failure of ideology and of the American Dream in the 1960'2 gave young dreamers who were eager to live just one way out: the road.
Kerouac presents Sal Paradise,a young and innocent writer and Dean Moriarty,a crazy youth "tremendously excited with life" racing around America, and testing the limits of the American Dream.Their journeys consist of scenes of rural wilderness sleepy small towns,urban jungles,endless deserts and inner need to get out,break it's confinement,and find freedom,liberated from any higher belief,notion on ideology.The desperation and the lack of fullfillment made these youths feel that " the only to do was go",searching for their personal freedom,and finding pleasure ib sex,drugs and jazz.
It seems that the "beat generation" had one and only ideology,and that was life.As Sal Paradisesays : "life is holy and every moment is precious",which explains why Dean "seemed to be doing everything at the same time".The fear of death subconsciously followed the gang around America,as expressed by their visions of a spirit following them across the desert of life.
Wasn't the " bat generation" a particularlywise and enlightened one them?Isn't it true that every human being's greates fea is that death will come to soon,before he/she has time to do what he/she had always wanted to do?Isn't it always too soon?
Eventhough the gang feared that " death will over take us before Heaven" they did all in their power to experience as much of Heaven as they could while still alive.They were wise enough to see that their was no point in conforming with the materialsm of the American Dream: " the mad dreams-grabbing,taking,giving,sighing,dying,just so they coulde be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City."
It is for this reason Kerouac presents "the beat generation" as a "holy generation: because it was liberated from the peril of ambition,materialism,ideology and was in a constant search for some greater truth that life would teach them.Ed Dunkel,the tall,silent lost boy described as "an angel man".Dean Moriarty ,the personification of the road was a "holy con-man" with a "holy lightning" gaze.By the end of the novel,Dean achieves so high as a level of saintliness that he 'couldn't talk anymore".
"On the Road" is a novel ofexperience: it tells tales of madness played out by all kinds of strange characters is settings as diverse as the Virginia small-town diner,a New York jazz-joint and a Mexican whore house.What connect these adventures is the characters refusal to miss out on life,and the determination to get the most out of now.
-Anna Hassapi (Book Review-nabau)