Outline and Quotes

Warning, I had no idea what I was doing. Good luck.

Gioia Kelleher

On the Road Outline

Thesis: The fuel the drives Sal and Dean back and forth across the entire North American continent is their lust for happiness. Their lust is generated from their previous experiences such as World War Two and prison. 

Introduction:

Introduce the concept of self defined happiness and that many of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty’s actions are prompted by their desire to find it. Introduce that Sal and Dean are different from past generations because of their experiences and that the history of the United States will show this. Also introduce the futility of their search.

Argument One:

First introduce the time period during which Sal and Dean grew up.

One the Road takes place after the Great Depression and World War Two, but before the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s. They are stuck in a grey zone of American history.  

They were promised by their parents and their teachers that they would be happy if they followed the steps already created for them by previous generations, but what they have witnessed would tell them other wise, so instead they try to find it for themselves.

Sal wants his life to be extraordinary, not just what he has observed from the lives of other people. He does not want follow the steps all ready laid out for him; he does not believe that is where happiness lays. He does not just want to go to college, get married, buy a house, have children, pay taxes and die. He thinks that there’s got to be more to life than that.

Quotes:

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” – Sal (Part One Chapter One)

“What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls. I don't know," she said. "Just wait on tables and try to get along." She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.”- Sal (Part III, Chapter 11)

            “Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.”- Dean (Part II Chapter 3) This quote explains Dean’s madness.

Argument Two

Though their struggle and search is honorable, what results is their restlessness. Though the like to think their ideas and thoughts are uniquely theirs, they are shared by an entire generation. 

There is subtle change throughout the novel. Sal starts his first journey across the country full of exuberance, which is also evident in Kerouac’s writing. Kerouac starts the novel writing in long rolling sentences, which conveys Sal’s feelings at the time. But over time things start to change for Sal and his friends such as Dean and Carlo Marx. They loose the excitement, and become disillusioned.

The saddest part of this novel is that if anyone could have ended up happy it would have been Sal or Dean. No one else lusted after freedom as much as they did. Even when having every opportunity to be happy, it is an inherent part of human nature to be sad.

As long as Sal and Dean are on the road there is a possibility that they will find what they think will solve all their sadness, but in the end they realize that it does not exist. This is why they end up going to Mexico. 

Quotes:

"running from one falling star to another" [Part II, Chapter 4]. They are all reaching for this goal.

“…’I said, ‘Gene, that’s the prettiest song.’
‘It’s the sweetest I know,’ he said with a smile.
‘I hope you get where you’re going, and be happy when you do.’
‘I always make out and move along one way or the other’ (Part One, Chapter Four). Right from the beginning of his journey he begins to witness everyone’s sorrow. 

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.” I’ll figure out a way to shorten this when I am actually writing the paper.

 “all the time I was thinking of Dean and how he got back on the train and rode over three thousand miles over that awful land and never knew why he had come anyway, except to see me” (Part V, Chapter 1) We have to experience the sadness of Sal having to loose his faith in his hero.

“We saw a vision of the entire Western Hemisphere rockribbing clear down to Tierra del Fuego and us flying down the curve of the world into other tropics and other worlds. "Man, this will finally take us to IT!" said Dean with definite faith. He tapped my arm. ‘Just wait and see. Hoo!” (Part IV, Chapter III)

“All had their hands outstretched. They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it. They didn’t know that a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and roads and reduce them to jumbles, and we would be as poor as they someday, and stretching out our hands in the same, same way” (Part IV, Chapter 6)