Outline Number Two

One the Road to a Term Paper

Gioia Kelleher

INTRODUCTION

         History and Background

Great Depression World War Two

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

B. Post-World War Two Economic Boom

1. After the doomsday mood and perspective of the 1930’s and 1940’s there was an uncomfortable placidity of the late 1940’s and 1950’s.

2. But my vacation recently at a beautiful lake was marred by the constant noise of jet skis.

         Who is Jack Kerouac and what is the Beat Generation?

It is widely considered that On the Road is partially autobiographical, though this seems inconsequential considering that every piece of literary has to be at least somewhat autobiographical, it is very important when analyzing One the Road to understand the life of Jack Kerouac more so than would be required for other novels  

Jack Kerouac joined the Merchant Marines his sophomore year at Columbia University due to a disagreement with his football coach.

In 1947, after the end of World War Two, Kerouac began his cross-country journeys in the automobile, which would later inspire the novel On the Road. It was during these journeys that he met Neal Cassidy who would Kerouac would base the character Dean Moriarty of off, the second protagonist in the novel

John Clellon Holmes, a fellow author and friend of Jack Kerouac, is best known for his novel “Go” and is considered the first Beat author. Jack Kerouac first labeled the Beat generation in an interview with Holmes and later quoted him an article in The New York Times Magazine "You know, this is really a beat generation."

John Clellon Holmes is also quoted for saying "Everywhere the Beat Generation seems occupied with the feverish production of answers—some of them frightening, some of them foolish—to a single question: how are we to live?"

Though The Beat were unique to their era, the represent a communal conflict that every new generation must deal with. The restlessness of having to balance what previous generation tells you what is right and what you believe is right.

They were promised by their parents ant their teachers that they would be happy if the followed the steps already created for them by previous generation, but the history they have witnesses would tell them other wise, so instead the tried to find their own path.

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BODY

I. Sal’s and Dean’s journeys back and fourth across the United States represent their search for

Sal wants his life to be extraordinary, which is why he is drawn to mad and counter-culturist people such as Dean. He does not want to live the lives of his aunt or his brother; he does not believe that is here happiness lies. He does not just want to go to college, get married, buy a house, have children and die. He believes or at least hopes that there is more to life than that.

C. Quotes

1. 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)

2. “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)

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

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II. Though their struggle and search is honorable, what results is their restlessness and ultimately their failure.  

A. 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.

B. The sadness 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 Sal and Dean did. Even when having every opportunity to be happy, it is an inherent part of human nature to be sad.

C. One the Road is criticized for being sexist and an inaccurate portrayal of women. Dean Moriarty at one point in the novel is going back and forth between two hotel rooms in order to sleep with two different women, Marylou and Camille. Though the portrayal of women in On the Road is rough, it is not necessarily incorrect. Kerouac spends a majority of the novel commenting on the journeys and conflicts associated only with Sal, Dean, and their male friends, but female characters do play an important role in the novel. Kerouac does touch upon the struggle women occulted in the

D. They realize that it is easier to just fall in line.

E. Quotes 

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

2. “…’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. 

3. “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.

4. “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.

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.

5. 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.

6. “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)

7. “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)

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CONCLUSION

         Summary

         Clincher