4. 2 On the Road under experiences of Jack Kerouac and relationship between him and his friends
Jack Kerouac is wildly acknowledged to be the spokesman of the Beat Generation. It can be said that this literary talent was sparked by a collision between their personal aggressiveness and social solidity. His literary achievements were fulfilled through legendizing his individual experiences. On the Road, the masterpiece of Jack Kerouac, considered as the Bible of the Beat Generation, could not be conferred such a crown without the disposition of Kerouac’s individual experiences.
4. 2. 1 Kerouac’s wandering life in On the Road
Sal Paradise, the narrator of the novel, is presented as Kerouac himself. Analyzed in 3.2.1, Sal is one of the middle class, but wishes the overturn of the present dull life and pursues enthusiasm and novelty. In some degree, Sal, a preventative of the Beat Generation, is aggressive towards life. And in reality, Kerouac’s outstanding capability during his adolescence accumulated an aggressive sense of self-center. In his hometown, Lowell, his precocious mind and husk body ensured his superiority to his peer on wording and athletics. He tried hands on writing as early as eleven yeas old. Also, because of his track and football feats, Kerouac became a Lowell celebrity. Then the recruiter from both Boston College and Columbia University were attracted by him. From the success in the football team to the kick out and from the enlistment in the Navy to the demission, the aggressiveness bred in his teenage drove him out of the conventional society, the urge to present his talent and to present it freely determined his unconventional pursuit for his self-assertion. “His refusals to submit to authority prefigure the way the Beats would employ unconventional behavior as a method of release from confining social expectoration.” [10]
Kerouac’s wandering life must affect the portrayal of Sal and other characters. From his hometown to the Columbia University and then to the Navy, Kerouac was wandering all the time. And after his unsuccessful experience in Columbia, he never stopped his wandering. He ever went to New Haven, back to Lowell and to ship out as a scullion on a merchant-marine vessel. Then he resumed his study in Columbia. And even after he married, he still wanders. He hitchhiked to Chicago, to Denver and at last wound up on the West coat. The only four trips in On the Road may be not adequate to contain all Kerouac’s wandering life. But it is enough to express his original motivation that he is hatred of the easeful but insipid life bound by countless orders and conventions. Here, Sal doubted that “what God had wrought when he made life so sad” [8] and to him, one crucial point that convinces him to hold an existential view of life is that “we only live once, we are having a good time” [8], so he is so engrossed in traveling to enjoy every moment, with his thirst for life completely driven by his beliefs that “life is holy and every moment is precious.” [8] However, like other Beats, Kerouac and Sal is self-contradictory too. In reality, Kerouac, though longing for wandering and adventure, spent his last years in his hometown and became addicted to drugs, hocusing him. In the novel, Sal, at last, also goes back to New York, though he still wishes more travels. In spite of his strong pulse to join Dean to attend the concert in New York at the end of the novel, he lied to Dean “Good-by, Dean, I sure wish I didn't have to go to the concert.” [8]
4. 2. 2 Spontaneity of Jack Kerouac’s life and his writing style in On the Road
During the only 47 years’ life, Kerouac experienced spontaneity almost in every moment. From his great register to Columbia University to dropping out, from honorable discharge from to Merchant Marine and then to his wandering life in New York, from divorce with the first wife to marry an older woman just for the care of his old mother, no minute is without spontaneity in his life. And his writing style—spontaneous writing, a main style of Beats writing, Ginsberg terms as first thought, best thought, is incisively and vividly embodied in his masterpiece, On the Road. He typewritten this novel just in one week and in the novel, no clear plot can be found. The whole novel is more like a diary or a disconnected group of words than a story-telling. In this novel, time, place and relevant events lack the coherence and one can hardly find out the main plot by means of these elements which are effective for the plotting of the traditional kinds of prose. In the novel, the shift of time and places seems quite abrupt. In the first part, the appearance of Dean is very abrupt and Sal then presents no reason for the disappearance of Dean. And the scenes in the novel leave us no hints for the unfolding of the plot. It is just after a dialogue between Carlo and Dean that readers suddenly get that Sal intends to set out for a new travel.
In the evening I was involved in that trek to the mountains and didn’t seen Dean or Carlo for five days. Babe Rawlins had the use of her employer’s car for the weekend. We brought suits and hung them on the car windows and took off for central city, Ray Rawlins driving, Tim Gray lounging in the back, and Babe up front. It was my first view of the interior of the Rockies. [8] 转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net
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