Impact of Dean on Sal's Identity in On the Road
In part I, chapter 3 of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Sal arrives at Des Moines and checks into a cheap, dirty motel room. He sleeps all day and awakens in time to witness the setting sun. As he looks around the unfamiliar room, Sal realizes that he doesn't understand his own identity. Identity lost, he states "I was half way across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future." He has lost the calming influence of his aunt, and Dean and partners are not around to feed his wild streak. The only clues to his identity are to be found in the strange motel room. This appeal to emotion gives the reader personal hints to identify with.
Many people have become lost in the context of their life and do not understand what they have been doing or what the purpose of existence is. The manner in which Kerouac relates his own feelings to the dark, soothing atmosphere of the room gives the reader a clear idea as to what he is experiencing. This appeal to style lulls the reader into contemplation concerning their...
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... of my life you could call my life on the road." Sal needed Dean to have an identity. In fact, as much of a driving force that Dean was, in the end, Dean and Sal needed each other to balance out the holes in their personalities.
Bibliography
Charters, Ann. Kerouac: A Biography. New York: A Warner Communications Company, 1973.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. United States of America: Penguin, 1976.
Tytell, John. Naked Angels: the Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
Kerouac also reflects on the futile trap of materialism. Japhy discusses "all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least fancy new cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.
Salinger’s view of the world is lived out thought Holden – his persona. The novel is Holden’s steam of conscience as he is talking to a psychoanalyst “what would an psychoanalyst do…gets you to talk…for one thing he’d help you to recognise the patterns of your mind”. At the start of the novel it is addressed directly to us “if you really want to hear about it”. This gives us a sense of reality as though it is us that is the psychiatrist. We see the random thought patterns of Holden’s mind as he starts to feel more comfortable, Holden goes off on to many different tangents while he is talking. Salinger is using Holden as a type of easy way out to confess his view of the world.
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
. . Salinger [said] they had gotten married partially because the two of them had a telepathic connection” (113). To help cope with his emotional anguish, Salinger looked to a compassionate feminine figure for caring support, which led their relationship to thrive on the basis of a real and profound passion for each other. By finding relief and a sense of belonging in their heartfelt discussions, Salinger alluded to his craving for an honest relationship formed by a powerful connection, which directly correlates to Holden’s ideals of a relationship being genuine and pure. Reflecting the views of Holden, Salinger valued the emotional side of a relationship as well as the strength and sincerity of a romantic bond. Through the examination of Holden’s unstable relationship with Sally Hayes, Trowbridge discusses Holden’s hatred for conformity and examines his hope for a more intimate and true connection: “She fits in beautifully with his genuine leather bags from Mark Cross, but . . . one of the things that most bothers Holden . . . is that appearances seem to have more power than reality. How much money you have, what your social position is
up the steps and entered the house. A combination of horror and amazement swept over
got away. he would come back in a better mood to be with his father.
The Catcher in The Rye, an amazing book written in 1951 by J.D. Salinger, got much attention when it became published. J.D. Salinger’s talent of writing became famous caused him to get much attention. Although all the fame and fortune, J.D. Salinger didn’t seem to deal with the attention very well and shut himself out, away from the world. Today, no one really knows why he lived a recluse and what lead to him being that way. Even though we don’t really know why, people have many theories of why he lived his last moments of his life lonely.
Every since he enlisted in the army, Salinger was greeted by trials, tribulations, pain, suffering, and near death experiences. The Catcher in the Rye is Salinger’s way of expressing his disappointment in the world and all the phonies that occupy it. Salinger saw his brothers in arms die right before him in countless battles against the Nazis and the Japanese. He saw people he knew and cared about die in a frenzy of bullet fire. He saw his fellow soldiers get slaughtered and die, like a lamb before the knife. The Catcher in the Rye represents all of Salinger’s pent up resentment that was left over from the war. In fact, Holden himself represents Salinger’s angst at the world. Holden’s obsession and resentment over phonies and the
Many young people often find themselves struggling to find their own identity and place in society. This search for self worth often leaves these young people feeling lonely and isolated because they are unsure of themselves. Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger's main character in the book The Catcher In the Rye, is young man on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. One contributor to this breakdown, is the loneliness that Holden experiences. His loneliness is apparent through many ways including: his lack of friends, his longing for his dead brother, and the way he attempts to gain acceptance from others.
...at lead us to believe that life has leading characters and minor characters, important details and unimportant details, beginnings, middles, ends" (Bryfonski, 521). Many critics acclaim that Nine Stories and The Catcher in The Rye are Salinger’s most famous and important works (Bryfonski, 521). The Glass family saga starting in Nine Stories and continuing in and ending in Franny and Zooey shows how the lack of love and the influence of society can lead to destruction unless you find enough inner strength to rise above it. Many of Salinger’s characters are connected to other fictional characters by other authors. In The Catcher in The Rye, the young Holden Caulfield is compared by critics to Huckleberry Finn: He has a colloquialism as marked as Huck’s…Like Huck, Holden is neither comical or misanthrope. He is an observer. Unlike Huck, he makes judgements by the dozen, but these are not to be taken seriously; they are concepts (Lomazoff, 7). Holden is also compared to Hamlet but to a lesser degree; they are both not totally in the minds. The majority of Salinger’s characters learn from being alienated. Through learning this one aspect, they gain strength from it to move on.
The Beat Generation was a subculture that arose from the post World War II Bohemian culture in the United States. Bohemians can be defined as persons, artists, who live an unconventional life, usually amongst others also practicing this lifestyle. Bohemianism, as such, has always had a strong affiliation with the development of avant-garde as movements within art; significantly, Bohemia has been called the “underworld of art.” The Bohemian culture itself “is characterized by an active, though perhaps, irregular communalism and group dyn...
Weissman, Dick. (2010). Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution: Music and Social Change in America. Blackbeat Books: New York
My mouth fell open. If those were warriors from my tribe, they would be dead. None of them could reach my father.
The house was old. My grandmother lived in it most of her life. The house was