Literary Analysis #2: On the Road

1. The plot of On the Road follows the "adventures" of the narrator Sal Paradise as he travels to and from the coasts of America with his pal Dean Moriarty. From New York to Denver, from San Fran to New Orleans and even Mexico City, the two as well as other buddies traveled all over the map. The real story however is less in the destinations the pair reached however but in the relationship that grew and matured between them, ending with both older and more certain with their positions in life.

2 . The theme of On the Road gravitates around the central ideals of Beat. On the Road in it's purest form is a portrait of the 1950's Beat lifestyle, epitomizing values such as the romance of  anti-materialism, non-conformity and Dean at the foremost, hedonism. Though the relationship between Sal and Dean evolved into symbiotic bromance, even at the very end Dean remained Beat personified and ultimately left Sal.

3. Kerouac's tone could be described as lonesome and marked by always in search of comraderie:
    -A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
    -Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
    -LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets

4:Kerouac is very descriptive in his writing, often directly being symbolic in his descriptions; which fares well for someone who isnt the biggest fan of Hemingway (me). His often romantic depictions of life on the road has a natural appeal to pathos:
       -The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.
       - What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies
       -Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy.