Essay on the Failure of Language in Malcolm and On the Road

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The Failure of Language in Malcolm and On the Road

John Clellon Holmes in his essay "The Philosophy of the Beat Generation" characterized his young contemporaries as deeply spiritual; to him, the very eccentricity of the fifties with their characteristic sexual promiscuity, drug addiction, petty criminality, and heterodox forms of self-expression was an attempt to assert one's individuality in the atmosphere of pervasive conformity of that Golden Age. And judging by the literature of this era from the distance of four decades one might conclude that incessant search for one's true self was, indeed, what this time was all about. The shaping of identity of a young protagonist (or its failure) is the dominant motif of the two outstanding works of the period--James Purdy's Malcolm and Jack Kerouac's On the Road, published in 1959 and 1957 correspondingly; their central characters, Dean Moriarty and Malcolm, severed from the primal source of identity--their fathers, are on a quest to regain the touch with that most fundamental aspect of their individuality.

Defining oneself in relationship to language is an essential part of this quest. There is a certain magnetism about Malcolm and Dean that wins over hobos, billionaires, chanteuses, and bohemians alike; but whatever the nature of their charm might be, it is not linguistic. Indeed, both Malcolm and Dean are at odds with standard English. Malcolm's verbal innocence makes him a foreigner to any circle he finds himself in; the pattern corruption in the novel, therefore, requires that his mentors introduce him to the vocabulary which stands for yet another aspect of the wickedness they are to "break him in." This is an arduous task, given the extent to which Malcolm is a...

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...y appropriated, were the heroes of the generation (Krupat 407). Purdy's novel, on the other hand, denies his Everyman a father, humanity its God, and the world any meaning.

Works cited

Adams, Stephen D. James Purdy. London: Vision, 1976.

Holmes, John C. "The Philosophy of the Beat Generation." On the Road. Text and Criticism. By Jack Kerouac. Ed. Scott Donaldson. New York: Penguin, 1979. 367-79.

Kerouac, Jack. On the road. Ed. Scott Donaldson. New York: Penguin, 1979.

Krupat, Arnold. "Dean Moriarty as Saintly Hero." On the Road. Text and Criticism. By Jack Kerouac. Ed. Scott Donaldson. New York: Penguin, 1979. 397-411.

Lorch, Thomas M. "Purdy's Malcolm: A Unique Vision of Radical Emptiness." Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature. 6 (1965): 204-13.

Purdy, James. Malcolm. London, New York: Serpent's Tail, 1994.

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