On the Road: the Fictional Reality. By Jack Kerouac.

Dylan Martin

Ms. Yun

English

12/10/03

On the Road: the Fictional Reality

Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, a story of his journey across America, as a fictional book for personal safety and because he believed fiction had more meaning for a book. The period in which Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road shunned some of the ideas portrayed in the book. Kerouac felt it was necessary to disclose the identities of the people in the book and turn it in to a fictional story so as not to be associated with the book. Another reason Kerouac made On the Road fictional was because biographies are not as popular as fictional books and fictional books have more meaning and leave more room for interpretation for a reader. Kerouac’s book On the Road is fictional because it protects the identities of the people who are paralleled in the book and leaves room for interpretation for the readers as to what is true and what isn’t.

This is a preview of the whole essay

The main and almost soul reason the book is classified as fiction is because Kerouac changed all the real peoples names to the made up ones he uses in the book. Kerouac does this for a couple reasons. One, being that people at the time didn’t like some of the idea’s the book brings up. For example “the beat’s” view of girls wasn’t very popular and Kerouac wouldn’t want his friends to get hassled by the public for that, especially himself. Kerouac also wanted to protect his friends and himself from lawsuits and charges that could be pressed against them for the various things they did. Another reason could be that Kerouac was only looking for a story while he was “on the road” and only loosely based the book on his true experiences while exaggerating some parts, taking some parts out and putting in some completely untrue parts. Fiction allows the author to spice it up a bit too, which makes the book even better. It is also very likely that he made it a fictional story because biographies aren’t as popular. People like fiction a lot more because it isn’t seen as boring and it leaves room for interpretation as to what is true and what isn’t. Kerouac made this book fictional in order to protect his friends and himself and to make it a better book in general.

Jack Kerouac made On the Road fictional for several reasons ranging from his friends safety to hope for success. Kerouac wanted to protect his friends from public humiliation, lawsuits and harrasment by using fictional names instead of their true real names. Kerouac probably also wanted to change around a couple parts of the book that he didn’t like or needed a little exaggeration to spice it up. One of Kerouac’s main goals was to sell the book and I personally would much rather read a fictional book than someone’s biography just because fiction tends to be a lot less boring, so Kerouac might have used it as a marketing advantage. Mainly I think Jack Kerouac was “on the road” because he was looking for inspiration in his writing or to write about, and when he finally found it, he used his travels as a base to his story and changed certain things. On the road is a fiction book because Kerouac decided to protect his and his friends identities by changing their names and because he altered some of the content of the book in order to make it better.