consumerism and conformity of that time. (PerizRodriguez: 82) Thus, the journey of spiritual transformation of the two main characters, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, becomes self-explanatory. The very need for spiritual fulfilment is born from the need of change. The necessity to change his life Sal implies with the first two sentences saying “I first met Dean not long after my wife and I…
Jack Kerouac: Disillusionment of American Youth and the Beat Generation In the 1950’s American youth was victimized for their own social and spontaneous pleasure. Teens were not allowed to do much of what they wanted and were restricted of nearly everything. This book shows the struggle between teens trying to express who they are and the restrictions given by society. The novel, On the Road by Jack Kerouac portrays the disillusionment of American youth which was then a major contribution to…
Compare the sound and pace of both passages. Describe the similarities you hear. What might account for these similarities? In which ways might Howl and On the Road celebrate life? A passage adapted from On the Road reads: “My first impression of Dean was of a young Gene Autry ---trim, thin-hipped, blue-eyed, with a real Oklahoma accent –a sideburned hero of the snowy West. In fact, he’d just been working on a ranch, Ed Wall’s in Colorado, before marrying Marylou and coming East” (334). A…
While the terms boredom and discontent are thrown around in daily life, when brought to the extreme these emotions can have great power over the path of people’s lives. Brought to a standstill by their own dissatisfaction in what their past has consisted of, those plagued by monotony come to question why they exist at all. This is where the meaning of life truly comes into the picture. People are driven to find meaning in their lives when they discover their dissatisfaction with it, these…
A Picaresque Reading of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) A. Brief Information about Jack Kerouac and the Novel Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922 and died in Florida in 1969. Having attended Columbia University where he met the members of the group what would later be called the Beat Generation and some of them would appear as characters in his novel On the Road. However, as it is stated in the introduction part for the novel, ‘’Kerouac, at the age of nineteen, decided that…
Kerouac’s narrative of On the Road is akin to a spiritual journey, or a process of self-discovery, in relation to the world. The characters of Sal Paradise based on himself and Dean Moriarty based on Neal Cassady form character personas around both of them in relation to the Beat aesthetic. The character of Dean Moriarty, in particular, invokes the image of the Beat lifestyle as a rebellion against popular culture and encompassed a carefree attitude and charisma that Kerouac admired as well as…
Essay Term 1: The Beat Generation A Subculture Analysed “The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people of all different nationalities who came to the conclusion that society sucked.” Amiri Baraka (The Source, 1999) Introduction In a hegemonic culture, subcultures are constantly resisting systems of beliefs imposed on society creating a constant struggle for hegemony (University of Washington, https://faculty.washington.edu/mlg/courses/definitions/hegemony.html, no date). This…
Many people in America are unsure where they belong or where they should be. Some people choose to explore the world by traveling while the others choose to rot in their boring lives. Life in America is hard, there are highly expectations from people and the judgment is in every corner one turns to. The three novels, Into the Wild, Travels with Charley, and On the Road are three unique novels about separate individuals who choose to travel in order to seek what they are looking for. McCandless,…
Unfortunately, some companies have mismanaged their greatest asset—their brands. This is what befell the popular Snapple brand almost as soon as Quaker Oats bought the beverage marketer for $1.7 billion in 1994. Snapple had become a hit through powerful grassroots marketing and distribution through small outlets and convenience stores. Analysts said that because Quaker did not understand the brand’s appeal, it made the mistake of changing the ads and the distribution. Snapple lost so much…