Why Nothing Ever Happened In On The Road

      After two hundred and ninety three pages of constant complaining that nothing every truly happens in On The Road, I am here to say, once again, after reading the entire ‘adventure’ novel, barely anything happened in the novel between the time lapses of parts one through five. Now, I can argue that this fact is both an asset and a detriment to the novel.

      When considering this fact to be a detriment to the novel, I mean to say that most people who are not forced to read this novel would probably go back to the book store (Even though that is not very realistic now of days as we all order our books) and return the novel. The lack of character development and the absence of action that the title ‘On the Road’ suggests can be quite disappointing to a reader. Before reading a single page of the novel, I was expecting it to be a death defying, thrilling, and adventurous novel full of twists and turns in the plot context; however, what I got was a mundane, stale, and antiquated plot with barely any character development. After one hundred pages in fact, it got quite repetitious and predictable.

      Although I make the argument in the previous paragraph that the lack of excitement was a detriment to the novel, I also make a case around the fact that as a result of the lack of action, the novel was able to come to a close. Sal throughout the novel has had an inner struggle of finding himself. His way of aiding this wound was to follow the crazy, death defying Dean; however, in this journey with Dean, slowly but surely, Sal started to realize that Dean’s attitude on life was killing them both. As the book progressed Dean transitioned from a strong and prominent character, to a protagonist who needed to abuse substances and mistreat woman to get a sufficient ‘high’. By the end of the novel, Sal looked down upon Dean and realized his superiority. He understood that we put our heroes on a pedestal that we think is unachievable, but as soon as we meet them, we can see their flaws as they too are solely human.

      Now, to wrap this up, I argue that the lack of action is an asset to the book in that Sal never needed anything to happen in his life to make him any better or worse. And as cliche as that might sound, Sal did in the end find the strength to become an independent man. He no longer depended on the road to define who he was, but rather allowed his mind and attitude to make the key decisions that would define his future. A future without drugs and alcohol but rather a future about love and absolute happiness.