The Novel of Jack Kerouac

It is this foundation upon which firearmy of the book's passage trips is built.

For Sal, Dean offers an opportunity to respond to a " parvenue battle cry and a newfangled horizon" (11). It is Sal's hope that the putative independence of the saucily West result be an antidote to the experiences of the senior East where Sal has just expeld a divorce and from which he wishes to escape. With $50 in hand and a plan to squall the West Coast, Sal embarks on his profess journey which ultimately coincides with journeys undertaken by otherwises who were also in search for new experiences and an improved life. In the process, Sal meets a number of individuals who expand his understanding of human nature, unless it is Dean who will become the focus of Sal's journey.

Dean is a man who "had the trework forcedous energy of a new grade of American saint" (34). He finds it difficult to accept permanency and is in pursuit of absolute honesty and absolute completeness and a schedule upon which he bases his life. With two women at any stipulation moment requiring his presence, Dean has divided himself and created a virtually unrealizable situation. He cannot satisfy either of the women in his life and consequently he constantly moves between places and people in an take on to find the best possible situation for himself.

From drinking to fetching drugs and listening to contemporary music, the journeys undertaken by Sal, Dean, and others offer unique opportunities for self-contemplation and the development of new bonds between men. Part of Sal's ambitio

Successful quests end in some reference of achievement or realization which enriches or ennobles the seeker. Sadly, Dean Moriarty will ne'er achieve such an end to his journey. He is in all likelihood still out there on some American highway looking for his father.

Having gone west, Dean and Sal return eastbound through Denver (172). What they have discovered together is that "the track is life" (175). However, it is a life for a young man and not the life for a person like Sal, who wants to consummate his writing and to achieve some stability in his own life.

For Dean, stability is less important than the constant pursuit of new experiences and new relationships.

n is to expand his writing ability and to complete his education. Where Sal recognizes ultimately that it is important to focus one's energies on the possible, Dean never understands that life must include choices. Like many other young men, Dean wants everything, whether it is women or experiences or friendship.

Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Signet, 1957.

For members of the Beat generation, the notion of travel or road trips appears from Kerouac's opinion to be intimately linked to self-discovery. Only by gaining new experiences, meeting new people, and exploring unknown territory could these young men and the women with whom they lived begin to understand the meaning of human existence. The automobile becomes a symbol of the new mobility of the post-World War II generation in the United States, but this symbol also represents the rootlessness of disaffected youth.

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Men like Sal occasionally become "sick and shopworn of life" (89). This is exacerbated by seeing "with my innocent road-eyes the absolute betise" of the "mad dream" t
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