Four Possible Themes (Gioia Kelleher)

1. What brings Sal and Dean together is their shared search for individuality and self-defined happiness

2. The way that women are portrayed throughout the novel, and how at times it can be completely unjust and also somewhat realistic.

3. Fear and why Sal and Dean needed to be on the road.

4. Sal’s vision of America changes as time passes, and as that development occurs the reader learns more about the true identity of the country.

Four Possible Themes (Ari Garvett)

1. The Road is Our Drug- No matter if they go east to west or back form west to east, Sal and Dean always end up on the Pacific or Atlantic coasts and are forced to deal with their problems. The middle section of America grants them the temporary ability to distance themselves from real life and the burdens that come with it. The road, therefore provides temporary relief similar to a drug. It is a fantasy world that sooner or later shocks Sal & Dean into reality.

2. Heroes- 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. Sal for almost the entire novel admired and wishes he was Dean. Every action he took, no matter how large, was to further himself into his goal of becoming another Dean; however, once observing Dean’s psychotic break Sal realized his superiority to him. His hero in actuality was a monster hidden in the shadows by his own mind as we as human beings hate to be disappointed and would rather see the color red even if it is actually blue.

3. Lemon Squeezers- I define lemon squeezers to be people who metaphorically squeeze everything useful they can out of someone, and then dumps them in the trash. The novel is full of squeezers and most definitely Dean is one of them. His ‘honorable’ quest has turned into one characterized by manipulation, desperation, and lust. He continues to leave Sal, his ‘best friend’, for weeks at a time for someone else, and then returns once he is contempt that he has finished his business. Furthermore, he manipulates Marylou through his profession of his love to her to continue to journey on with him, but in the meantime, truly could care less about any one them. He desires the company of Marylou and Sal, but once he has found something better, leaves them for good. To tie this together, this essay would describe what I now believe to be the selfish natures of human beings. We all want to get ahead in life as we are the most important people on the planet, and in this process, we do not care who we have to squeeze.

4. A successful book even though nothing ever happened - as a result of the lack of action, the novel was able to come to a close. As Sal started to see the true colors of Dean he was able to realize that Dean had not changed him in the least bit but rather he had all the characteristics to become the successful, light hearted person he always wanted to become. Sal never needed anything to happen in his life to make him any better or worse. By the end of the novel, 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.

Four Possible Themes (Meagan Adler)

    1. The rejection of socially defined values that prevent the development of the individual that the Beat Generation, led by Dean, desperately tries to escape.  As we go on our continuous journey with Dean and Sal, we see that Sal is leading the rebellious youth out of society and trying to shift the older generation to the liberal left to encompass values of the individual.  Dean is constantly on the road because he fears the societal institutions that restrict the freedom of the individual.

    2. The objectification of women in a wild and youthful generation that views females primarily as objects of sexual pleasure.  As Jack Kerouac brilliantly portrays the discriminatory setting of the Beat Generation, we are constantly exposed to the inferior roles women play in society.  Most of the women we see throughout the novel are either waitresses or objects of sexual pleasure; through the dialect we are further exposed to their subservient role.

    

    3. Societal institutions are inescapable and underscore the idea that the individual is destined to fail.  We see that although Dean and Sal try to escape the institutions of church, state and family they never are able to completely escape them.  We see this when they constantly return back home on their cyclical journey to the societal institution of family and when they are periodically stopped by the police, the societal institution of state.  Ultimately, Sal is forced to conform to socially defined values, for when he reaches the fringes, he turns back to go home. 

    4. The homogeneity of America, for regardless of where Dean and Sal are geographically, they are really always in the “same vast backyard” (pg.11).  We see that societal institutions define the entire nation, giving each region a sense of uniformity.  This underscores the Kafkaesque idea of the failure of the individual and signifies the idea that there is no ultimate destination throughout the novel, but rather a constant and frantic journey on the road.  

Off the Road

      So what I just recently realized is that On the Road is not a novel about a very annoying and frustrating boy traveling back and forth across America, it is a novel about trying to find happiness. When I first started reading On the Road I was so confused by Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. I could not figure out why they acted the way they did, why they deliberately went against what people expected and wanted from them and at times deliberately tried to mess with their own lives. Sal and Dean have so many opportunities throughout the novel to have a happy and normal life, but they never take them, and at first that made me so mad and infuriated, but as I have already said, I have figured out something new about the novel and that is that On the Road is about happiness. More specifically, one’s own happiness, not society’s or your parent’s idea of happiness, but trying to find your own happiness. That is exactly what Sal and Dean are trying to do. 

      There is a lot that is left out about both the characters for most of the novel. Sal is living with his aunt and relies off his aunt for the entire novel, yet we never really hear about what happened to or where his parents are and it is not until the middle of the novel that we learn that he had been a soldier, or at least what I would assume considering that he goes to school off of the GI bill. I am not an expert in history but I am relatively sure that in order to go to school under the GI bill one must have fought as a soldier for America. Yet Sal never comments about or describes his experiences. We know for almost the entire novel that Dean had spent some time in jail, and yet, like Sal, we never hear anything about his experiences. But I think that both of these experiences have a huge impact on the characters and why act and carry themselves the way they do. I think that Dean is constantly so manic during the earlier parts of the novel because he went from traveling around the country riding on open trains with his father to being locked up. He lost all of his freedom and when he was given it back he went crazy and what I would say, he became absolutely high on it. Towards the end of the novel I think that Dean loses his enthusiasm because he started to realize that he was still trapped, even outside of jail he could not find real freedom.   

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.

The End

      The conclusion of the novel is both unexpected and captivating. Throughout the entire work we see Dean Moriarty as Sal’s role model. Dean is a party animal who has multiple affairs at once and just embodies the idea of being “cool”. Sal’s actions show how much Dean has influenced him because every word that comes out of Dean’s mouth is subject to Sal’s analysis. Moreover, Dean and Sal literally travel across the country together and learn everything about each other to the point that they become more than best friends. The two characters’ relationship is more like that of a brotherhood than of a friendship.

       Moving on, as Dean is having his plethora of sexual relationships with 1 in every 2 American women, Sal is trying to get an understanding of the world. Everywhere that they go, Sal contemplates on the differences between every city he has been to. In addition, he almost always meets a person that changes his life in one way or another. Overall, Sal’s time “on the road” allows for his development as a character who at first struggles to grasp any sort of meaning to his life. On the other hand, Dean’s time is less meaningful as he just wants to have fun.

       In many ways, I found the end of the novel to be ironic. Dean is the character that has been looked up to by both the audience and many other characters for his role as a “badass”. Meanwhile, Sal has been mocked for his monotonous lifestyle and his inability to really have fun. Sal knows this himself as he tries so hard to be Dean which is really the reason that he began spending time with Dean in the first place. At the end, however, it is Sal that ends up settling down and moving to San Francisco with his wife, Laura, while Dean is left alone without anything. Even more interesting is the fact that Sal at first invites Dean to join them in California, but after Dean comes too early and Sal cannot afford it, Dean is left to stay. This point in the novel is both sad and thematic. The reader can tell that Sal is suffering in having to leave Dean because he has admired him in so many different ways for so long. Additionally, Kerouac seems to be portraying to the audience that the “badass” that everyone looks up to does not always end up being that “cool”. In fact, it may be the more inexperienced and boring person (Sal) that turns out to be more successful. 

       On the Road was a great novel in many ways and I really enjoyed reading it. I will admit that there were many moments where I was bored to death, but there were also many that I was dying to see what would happen next.

Sal: “You mean we’ll end up like old bums?” Dean: “Why not, man? Of course we will if we want to, and all that. There’s no harm ending that way. You spend a whole life of noninterference with the wishes of others, including politicians and the rich, and nobody bothers you and you cut along and make it your own way” (Meagan Adler)

      At the conclusion of our seemingly never ending cyclical journey with Sal, we are able to experience the sense of belongingness that begins to define both him and Dean as we leave Denver, the city life “dissolving to our sight” (pg.255), and go on the road to Mexico.  Dean is able to relate to the people of Mexico, a country where “Everybody’s cool, everybody looks at you with straight brown eyes and they don’t say anything, just look, and in that look all of human qualities are soft and subdued and still there” (pg.266); here, we see that Dean feels like an integrated part of the laid back society as opposed to how he feels in America, where he is an looked down upon outcast, burdensome to the judgmental society.  As Sal describes, “His eyes were red-streaked and mad and also subdued and tender- he hand found people like himself” (pg.267).  Here, I sympathized with Dean and felt like it was almost a bittersweet moment, for he was neglected by all the societal institutions as a child and never truly had a place in American society.  A particularly powerful part of the end of the novel that underscores the idea that Sal worships Dean as a God is that when he is high and says, “In myriad pricklings of heavenly radiation I had to struggle to see Dean’s figure, and he looked like God” (pg.272); this emphasizes the idea that Sal sees the Beat Generation’s attitude almost as a religion, being led by the heroic individualist, Dean.  Another part of the conclusion that I found particularly intriguing was that where Sal says “You mean we’ll end up like old bums?” (pg.239) and Dean replies “Why not, man? Of course we will if we want to, and all that.  There’s no harm ending that way.  You spend a whole life of noninterference with the wishes of others, including politicians and the rich, and nobody bothers you and you cut along and make it your own way” (pg.239); here, Dean expresses the Beat mentality in that the rebellious Beat Generation wants so desperately to escape the societal institutions that restrict them as individuals.  With Dean as its leader, the generation is trying to pull society to the liberal left and ultimately allow the individual to prevail over the conformist; it is for this reason that it rejects society and wants to stay moving on the road.  Ultimately, we see the substantial impact of this generation on America in shifting society’s approach and causing the people to question their current values, for their movement is unforgettable; we, like Sal, will always “think of Dean Moriarty” (pg.293).   

A Lot to Cover

      Wow, there’s a lot in this week’s reading that I will probably not be able to go over, but let’s just say that there was a lot of…excitement? Dean and Sal essentially go crazier than crazy and act like they are part of some badass movie. Neither of them have any control over their lives and Sal realizes this. Dean, on the other hand, cannot get himself to understand the mess that he is living. Although we have hated on Sal since the beginning for living such a boring life, we have to commend him on at least understanding that he is trash. Dean continues to live his joke of a life and he does not find much wrong with it. At one point in the reading he goes after Marylou and wants to kill her just because she is a distraction to his current affair with Camille. Dean’s insane attempts to get rid of Marylou result in a self-imposed injury on his hand. Moreover, when Dean and Sal finally get together again at the beginning of the reading, they take off for a new adventure.

      The two men jump back “on the road” and it seems as if Dean has no emotional attachment to the remnants of a family that he leaves behind. Sal, in reality, is really leaving nothing behind, but he realizes that Dean is no longer someone that he should look up to. For the first time, Sal notes all of Dean’s weaknesses when he thinks about what Dean says to him. Sal understands that Dean can fuck a million girls and still be a failure if he is unable to settle down and just be happy. In my opinion, Sal has reached a point where he has given up on life and he is only staying with Dean to give him any sort of reason to live.
      One major idea that I would like to point out is the possibility that Dean and Sal are having a significant mid life crisis. One scene that can arguably support this argument is when Sal becomes angry at Dean when he mentions how he is older than him. Sal becomes insulted at the fact that Dean would point out his old age. In addition, the two of them act as if they are two crazy teenage boys by stealing cars and fleeing a city and just constantly having to escape the consequences of the law. 

Generations

      In my earlier posts I wrote about how I had expected Sal to change, but when I wrote that I had thought he was going to change into a person excited by he saw  and experienced or at least some what optimist about America in general. I never thought he would be become the person we see now. 

      The fact that he thinks his life would be better as a minority such as an African American or Japanese American make shim appear very ignorant to me.it is a classic case of white guilt, that because be has been given opportunities that are not given to others means that he therefore has to hate himself. And that brings me to my next point. In the beginning of part three it because very apparent how much Sal hates himself. He has finally started to develop as character, which is what I have spent the entire novel asking him to do, so why does the Sal I see right now make me sad?

      Although On the Road makes me depressed, I think it is a very good representation of what many young adults go through. We grow up being told who we are supposed to be and that this way of living is supposed to make us happy. That if we grow up under the older generations  rules follow their plans and become a contributing member of society, we are supposed to be happy. But I honestly don't know that many adults who are not just living and working to pay off the mortgage  and are not cynical about the world around them, even though they fit the classic mold of what we were told growing up is correct. I think Sal and Dean are trying to escape that, and I do find that honorable and understandable. They are also trying to not worry about life which is very different from most of my generation. I constantly hear throughout Gulliver's halls how someone is never going to get into college. Sal tries very hard to avoid all deep emotions, which is a nice break from all other pieces if literature. 

      If there is one thing I can report on that makes me happy is that he has started to gain some respect for women. Hallelujah to that too, I was starting to get upset He finally feels bad for Camille because of the way Dean treats and has treated her.  

“With frantic Dean I was rushing through the world without a chance to see it” (Meagan Adler)

      As we again begin to aimlessly wonder on another (yes, another) cyclical journey with Sal and follow the “HOLY GOOF” (pg.183), Dean, we see the “rocking and roaring” (pg.187) Beat Generation as they “cross and recross towns in America” (pg.234). Sal realizes that “He (Dean) was the BEAT-the root, the soul of Beatific” (pg.185) (because none of us saw that coming) and that “with frantic Dean” he was “rushing through the world without a chance to see it” (pg.194).  Dean refuses to remain in one place for too long because he is afraid of settling down and being restricted by the societal institutions; he so desperately wants to escape these constraints and stay moving “a hundred and ten miles an hour straight through” (pg.218) so he does not have to loose his freedom as an individual and become one of the societal sheep.  We see Dean’s frivolous and arrogant carefree attitude at parts of the novel such as that where he says, “Now you see, man, there’s real woman for you.  Never a harsh word, never a complaint or modified; her old man can come in any hour of the night with anybody and have talks in the kitchen and drink the beer and leave any old time. This is a man, and that’s his castle” (pg.192); here, we see that Dean wants to be treated like a king, unconstrained by the societal institution of family.  I feel as if on the journey with his “holy con-man” (pg.202), Sal feels like he is again a child on a “white horse riding alongside over every possible obstacle that presented itself” (pg.196). He craves the invincibility of a wild and free child who sees with clarity, unrestrained by the distorted realities of the world.  Furthermore, I think that it is this need for youthfulness that Sal becomes notably offended by Dean’s remarks about his age; as he says, “you’re always making cracks about my age” (pg.201). We experience these feelings of invincibility at moments such as that when Sal says, “In no time at all we were back on the main highway and that night I saw the entire state of Nebraska unroll before my eyes” (pg.219); as he sees the whole state, he feels free and powerful in the idea that he is conquering the nation.  Unlike Sal, I have become quite bored with the mundanely dull journey and am about ready for it to end (oh wait, it does…where does he again end up? At his aunt’s house…back under the societal roof of the familial institution).  “So we didn’t go to Italy” (pg.235)… what a surprise.