Jack Kerouac’s On The Road - The American Quest Essay -- On The Road

On The Road and the American Quest Jack Kerouacs On The Road is the most uniquely American novel of its time. While it has never fargond advantageously with academics, On The Road has come to symbolize for many an entire generation of disaffected young Americans. One can focus on numerous issues wh en addressing the novel, but the two primary reasons which make the book uniquely American are its frantic Romantic search for the great American hero (and shipping in general), and Kerouacs Spontaneous Prose method of writing. On The Road is an autobiographical first-person book written in 1951 and based on Kerouacs experiences of the late 1940s. At the time, America was undergoing drastic changes and the sense of sterility brought on by a mechanized Cold War era society resu lted in a feeling of existential gap for many. Numerous Americans began to experience a sense of purposelessness and the air was rife with disillusionment. Kerouac was one of these restless postwar young people an d he longed for...something. A n ew kind of hero? A return to a Romantic tradition and simpler days? When Kerouac met Neal Cassady, he knew Cassady was the kind of hero he had been fulfillking. Eventually, as Robert Hipkiss notes, Kerouac began to see Neal as an archetypal American Man ....and, in fact, when Kerouac created Dean Moriarty out of Neal, he created a new symbol of flaming American youth, the American hero of the Beat generation (32-3). Indeed, as Hipkiss argues, Dean Moriarty is the most singular hero of the road America has ever had. Mixing the individualism of the freeborn American with that great present-day appurtenance of this freedom, the motor car,... ...opeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.... On The Road is an example of such a tests being taken -- and passed.... (132)Kerouac, like Bellow and Plath, sees that things are hopeless but he remains determined to go on, and on, andon.... Works CitedBartlett, Lee, ed. The Beats Essays in Criticism. Jefferson, C. McFarland, 1981.Bartlett, Lee. The Dionysian Vision of Jack Kerouac. Bartlett 115-26.Dardess, George. The Delicate kinetics of Friendship Reconsideration of Kerouacs On The Road. Hipkiss, Robert A. Jack Kerouac Prophet of the New Romanticism. Lawrence Regents P of Kansas, 1976.Hunt, Tim. Kerouacs Crooked Road. Hamden, CT Archon, 1981.Kerouac, Jack. On The Road. New York Signet, 1957.