Going to get somewhere, or just going. Kerouac's On the Road

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0 (A), University of Leipzig (Institute for American Studies), course: Travel Literature, language: English, abstract: INTRODUCTION What do Copernicus, Jesus, the German Green Party, and say the Impressionists have in common with Jack Kerouac? Obviously, all of them freed themselves from some prevailing belief or technique, or a similar, and introduced a new one instead. With all of them this introduction did not happen without resistance, especially not without resistance by the influential people of the respective branch. In all cases, the new idea experienced trouble to be taken seriously. When Kerouac tried to publish his novel On the Road, subject of this essay, which he had finished in 1951, he was turned down several times before in 1957 Viking Press would eventually agree on printing the book. Among the things the novel was disapproved of were the way of life depicted in it, breaking with traditions and trespassing moral and legal boundaries, as well as the lack of a new set of guidelines that were to replace the ones trespassed. Had it previously been the introduction of a new set of guidelines (as with Jesus and the Green Party) or beliefs (as with Jesus and Copernicus) or a new technique (as with the Impressionists) that led to dislike, it was now, among other things, the alleged lack of such a set. Schönfelder (1985: 391) discusses in his essay ”Zwischen anarchistischem Protest und Eskapismus” the quality of the Beats’ behavior and comes to the conclusion that they are subjects of the latter: ”Im Endergebnis liegt eine Spielart eines romantischen Eskapismus vor.”. Starting from this I am going to show three things. Firstly, I want to illustrate that the journeys in On the Road are not as aimless as they might seem at a first glance. There is an aim the characters are heading for, hence one must not blame the novel for not offering alternatives to the ideas condemned in it. However, it will become clear that this aim, that is thought to provide happiness by a particular form of freedom, involves certain ways of behavior that do trespass both legal and moral boundaries. In ”On the Road” Asher calls the protagonists’ series of journeys a mere ”joyride” (n.d.: 2). One might indeed consider the novel a praise of unbridled hedonism and individualism. It certainly is -- to some extent. But I will secondly try to show that Sal, the narrator, is very much on the road between traditional and new ideas, i.e. that his physical movement is part of an inner movement. In the end, Sal has become aware of the dreamlike quality of his and his friends’ goal...