Jack Kerouac’s On The Road - The American Quest Essay -- On The Road

On The avenue and the American Quest Jack Kerouacs On The Road is the approximately uniquely American novel of its time. While it has nalways fared well with academics, On The Road has come to attributeize for many an entire generation of modify untried Americans. One can focus on numerous issues wh en addressing the novel, but the two primary reasons which make the book uniquely American are its frantic Romantic search for the great American hitman (and ecstasy in general), and Kerouacs Spontaneous Prose method of writing. On The Road is an autobiographical first-person book written in 1951 and based on Kerouacs experiences of the late 1940s. At the time, America was undergoing drastic changes and the good sense of sterility brought on by a mechanized Cold War era society resu lted in a feeling of existential dislocation for many. Numerous Americans began to experience a sense of purposelessness and the air was rife with disillusionment. Kerouac was one of these restless post war young people and he longed for...something. A n ew kind of gun? A return to a Romantic tradition and simpler days? When Kerouac met Neal Cassady, he knew Cassady was the kind of hero he had been seeking. Eventually, as Robert Hipkiss notes, Kerouac began to see Neal as an archetypal American Man ....and, in fact, when Kerouac created Dean Moriarty out of Neal, he created a new symbol of flaming American youth, the American hero of the Beat Generation (32-3). Indeed, as Hipkiss argues, Dean Moriarty is the most singular hero of the road America has ever had. Mixing the individualism of the freeborn American with that great present-day offstage of this freedom, the motor car,... ...opeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.... On The Road is an example of such a tests being taken -- and passed.... (132)Kerouac, like yawl and Plath, sees that things are hopeless but he remains determined to go on, and on, andon.... Works Citedbartlett pear, Lee, ed. The Beats Essays in Criticism. Jefferson, C. McFarland, 1981.Bartlett, Lee. The Dionysian Vision of Jack Kerouac. Bartlett 115-26.Dardess, George. The Delicate Dynamics of Friendship Reconsideration of Kerouacs On The Road. Hipkiss, Robert A. Jack Kerouac prophesier of the New Romanticism. Lawrence Regents P of Kansas, 1976.Hunt, Tim. Kerouacs Crooked Road. Hamden, CT Archon, 1981.Kerouac, Jack. On The Road. New York Signet, 1957.