“I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Before that I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off. Dean is the perfect guy for the road because he was actually born on the road..”
In this book Sal takes a trip with Dean to all four corners of the country and they get to meet many interesting characters during their journey. These characters teach Sal a lot about life and its true meaning and while Dean is not essentially transformed by these events, Sal is able to get what he was looking for. He manages to attain that sense of certainty that he wanted, and the clouds of depression and disillusionment dissolve giving way to joy and meaning. In Dean’s character, we find a complex personality that is at once a con man and a saint. This may appears strange but the way he has been described in the novel is what gives this character credibility and makes him appear real, (which it actually was).
KATHRYN SHATTUCK (2001) writes in New York Times, “"On the Road" was closely based on the cross-country wanderings of Kerouac and his friend Neal Cassady, a charismatic drifter, as they traversed the highways of postwar America and Mexico. Armed with a rucksack filled with small notebooks, Kerouac verbally sketched scenes from everyday life, concentrating on what he considered the neglected cities of the West, where he imagined himself a sort of Sundance Kid to his companion's Butch Cassidy. The book's seemingly endless strands of rhythmic prose echoed the jazz Kerouac loved and heralded its author's belief that he had discovered a new form of writing both spontaneous and unrevised. "I really wrote a great book, my very best, one of the best to be published this year anywhere (or next Jan.) and wrote it too in 20 days as I say and I feel the pull and strain of having to type with a rusty typewriter like this and a dull ribbon that won't enact my tones," Kerouac wrote to Cassady on June 10, 1951.”
The character of Dean in the novel is anything but ordinary, he has not been placed for entertainment, instead he is present to introduce readers to new vistas of knowledge and intellectualism. It is through his character that Sal understands what blind faith really is and how it serves man. Sal who was all for intellectual exploration of worldly events, notices that some people possess immense faith in tomorrow and this is what takes them to their destination but he also realizes something else, he finds out that faith without action is not worth possessing.
Dean possess immense faith in God and in some kind of universal force in the beginning of the novel, "And of course no one can tell us that there is no God. We've passed through all forms…. Everything is fine, God exists, we know time…. God exists without qualms. As we roll along this way I am positive beyond doubt that everything will be taken care of for us--that even you, as you drive, fearful of the wheel .. the thing will go along of itself and you won't go off the road and I can sleep." But in the end, it became clear that such thinking was not exactly soul deep. While he did have faith, he never made use of it to bring a positive change in his life and this is what makes Sal realize why faith in the Beat generation was more verbal than spiritual.
We need to focus on this point in order to see how Sal gets to his destination while Dean, the man of higher intelligence gets caught in the web of social evils and thus loses sight of his goal, if he had one to begin with. Sal is in search of the same kind of faith and adventurous spirit that Dean possesses and somehow starts admiring his friend so much that even when he knows that Dean was not a trustworthy person, he still tags along with him to various parts of the country. This shows the idealism of that age and time but also exposes the vulnerability of social thinking of Beat generation.
Sal’s thinking in the beginning shows that the man was suffering more from flawed views than anything else. “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.” And it was near the end that he comes to the conclusion that it was this flawed thinking that made him stick with Dean through thick and thin. Truth is revealed to Sal during his last trip; and that is when we get to see the change that had occurred in Sal and his friend Dean.
Sal is a person who is not interested in reaching conclusions and thus avoids serious discussions that Dean and Carlo often engage in. From the very beginning of the novel, Sal was intelligent enough to know that his relationship with Dean would not last very long but he admired the man for his adventurous spirit and his slight madness. But his association with Dean helps him get to the truth that he was looking for.
Before the beginning of his first trip, Kerouac wrote, ''Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.''
We need to understand that Sal set out on his journey to discover the truth, to find out if there was indeed a force that could lift the clouds of depression and to know what faith really was and how it could be taken advantage of. But it is not exactly Dean who teaches him the truth but it is his personality and the various observations that Sal makes during his journey, which enables him to see the truth. He realizes that to get to the destination, man needs to combine intellectualism with action because faith without practice lacked any meaning and substance.
We already mentioned that Kerouac was a Beat icon and if we only understand what the people of this generation were looking for, we would be able to understand what Sal was seeking and can easily get to the core purpose of Sal’s journey. GILBERT MILLSTEIN, back in 1957, wrote about the beat generation and its disillusionment and reading his views on the subject can help a modern reader understand where the narrator of ‘On the Road’ was headed. Talking about the generation’s experimentation with alcohol and drugs, the critic wrote in the New York Times, “Inwardly, these excesses are made to serve a spiritual purpose, the purpose of an affirmation still unfocused, still to be defined, unsystematic. It is markedly distinct from the protest of the "Lost Generation" or the political protest of the "Depression Generation." The "Beat Generation" was born disillusioned; it takes for granted the imminence of war, the barrenness of politics and the hostility of the rest of society. It is not even impressed by (although it never pretends to scorn) material well-being (as distinguished from materialism). It does not know what refuge it is seeking, but it is seeking.”
The trips that he took for discovery of faith became less joyful as the novel progresses and the journey culminates in Mexico where Dean abandons Sal and this makes him realize that their relationship had limits which the two had now reached. But by this time, Sal has transformed into a more hopeful optimistic character but his faith in a better tomorrow spring from something more sound and solid than the superficial faith of Dean’s.
While the book is appreciated for its sheer originality of narrative style and the significance of its theme, it is important to mention here that many critics viewed this book as nothing more than travel chronicle when it first appeared in 1957. Though there were some critics who liked the book but these people were few and far between, most reviewers had no idea while Jack Kerouac would write this book and they couldn’t understand the significance of various characters in the novel.
Part of the problem emerged from the narrative style which is one thing that really sets it apart from other books but which was read with confusion in the days of the writer. But even more than the narration technique, it was the plot and theme of the book that puzzled many prominent figures in the literary circle of the 1950s and 60s. They were of the view that such books are written merely to gain more popularity and thus lack any depth. But the reason why people had difficulty reading the novel was because it was not possible for every critic to stand away from their times and analyze his generation in the same way that Kerouac did. We need to understand that the eras and time periods, which we can analyze so easily today, were not exactly unusual for those who were part of them. The reason being, not everyone possesses the ability to transcend his or her times and sense the changes that are gradually taking place in the society and culture. Jack Kerouac certainly possesses that ability but many others did not and thus his novel was not exactly read with enthusiasm by many learned men of the time.
DAVID DEMPSEY back in 1957 discussed Jack Kerouac’s book in his article ‘In Pursuit of 'Kicks' for New York Times, “Thirty years ago it was fashionable for the young and the weary—creatures of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald--simply to be "lost." Today, one depression and two wars later, in order to remain uncommitted one must at least flirt with depravity. "On The Road" belongs to the new Bohemianism in American fiction in which an experimental style is combined with eccentric characters and a morally neutral point of view. it is not so much a novel as a long affectionate lark inspired by the so-called "beat" generation, and an example of the degree to which some of the most original work being done in this country has come to depend upon the bizarre and the offbeat for its creative stimulus. Jack Kerouac has written an enormously readable and entertaining book but one reads it in the same mood that he might visit a sideshow--the freaks are fascinating although they are hardly part of our lives.”
If we simply pay attention to the last line of the above passage, we would be able to understand what it was that actually caused problems in reading the novel. Critics were unable to relate to the book because they were of the view that the eccentric characters present in Kerouac’s book were figments of his imagination and that no such people actually existed. This sort of disparity in thinking resulted in many literary figures dismissing the book as nothing more than a imaginative piece of fiction.
But the truth is that this book teaches us a lot about the social and cultural climate of 1950s and thus serves as one of the most reliable source for the study of the Beat generation and the generations preceding it.
REFERENCES:
- GILBERT MILLSTEIN, Books of the Times, September 5, 1957, New York Times
- DAVID DEMPSEY, In Pursuit of 'Kicks', September 8, 1957, New York Times
- KATHRYN SHATTUCK, Kerouac's 'Road' Scroll Is Going to Auction, March 22, 2001, New York Times
- JACK MINCH, SALE BRINGS 'MIXED FEELINGS' FOR ONE OF THREE LOCAL ESTATE HEIRS, Lowell Sun, May 23, 2001
