What Is The Breakdown Of Jack Kerouac's On The Road?

The Philosophical Breakdown of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”

The 1940’s was a hectic time period that spawned many different movements due to society's hunger for change. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was a novel inspired by the his own experiences. His life, time period, and philosophy are all woven into his piece. In “On the Road”, Kerouac uses his life experiences to weave an intricate story that kick started the Beat Movement by inspiring an entire generation to live life to the fullest.

It is important to understand the complexity of Kerouac’s life in order to interpret On the Road. Jack Kerouac was originally born Jean- Louis on March 12th, 1922. His father was from New Hampshire and his mother was an emigrant from Quebec. He had two other

The main character in On the Road, Sal, is the alter ego of Kerouac. The author’s own insanity can be seen even as he wrote his story, “He wrote the entire Novel over one three-week bender of frenzied composition on a single scroll of paper that was 120 feet long”(Jack). Another protagonist, Dean Moriarty, was inspired by a Neal Cassady that Kerouac met during his early life. Cassady is described as “an uneducated drifter and a manic depressive with a magnetic personality”(Literary Themes for Students). This is parallel to Dean Moriarty's personality in On the Road. Kerouac heavily based Dean off of Neal Cassady because of the influence he had on his life. “Neal Cassady (AKA Dean Moriarty) claimed to have stolen 500 cars between ages of 14-21. He emerged from Juvenile Penitentiary searching for something new” (“On the Road”). Much like Dean, Cassady was seen as a wildcard, “Kerouac knocked at the door to a sleazy flat in Harlem and Neal Cassady opened the door, naked, while a beautiful girl groped for clothes”(Soitos). Kerouac takes details from his own past and harnesses them to write his own

Eventually the Cold War put forced fear into the American public. The politics of paranoia left the public thinking less of the government. The Cold War lingers in Kerouac’s On the Road (“On the Road”). During this time period the public became open to trying more things in life and vastly adopted the Beat Movement. It was widely accepted that, “Kerouac and the Beats have been recognized for their critique of the conformity and consumerism associated with the postwar American culture” (Vredenburg). The overall time period was not afraid to try new things and would willingly go out of their way to party, do drugs, and have sex. This was highly inappropriate for the younger generation to have sexual relations without a spouse. This new lifestyle appalled the older generation and separated the people. There was a generational split. The time period’s language can be described as unique. The author uses his own time periods linguistics to paint a vivid picture of the protagonists adventure, “Then here came a gang of young bop musicians carrying their instruments out of cars. They piled right into a saloon and we followed them”(Kerouac 227). Kerouac’s inclusion of local color and basic understanding of the time period, allows the story to come to