On The Road Essay

Why do you think McCarthy has chosen not to give his characters names? How do the generic labels of “the man” and “the boy” affect the way you /readers relate to them?

The Road is a novel written by Cormac McCarthy set in a dystopian society. The text follows a boy and his “father” through the lawless world. The boy and his “father” take the reader through a journey through the post-apocalyptic world. The author Cormac McCarthy entertains his readership of The Road through using multiple core techniques. Cormac McCarthy expands on each technique as a form of entertainment for the reader and to draw the reader further in.

The first line that opens the book of “The Road,” sets the bleak tone of the novel. When we begin reading this novel, we quickly realize that we are entering a wasteland. We start to feel the hopelessness that the characters, the man and the boy, share and we begin experiencing the dread that characters experience from day to day. When a glimpse of light makes its way through he words written on the pages, we may feel our hearts leap, but only a little, for soon something miserable or life threatening happens. In “The Road,” we experience what the world is like as a never-ending wasteland, dangers that the characters go through, and a roller coaster of sorrow, disappointment, and hopelessness.

Discuss how the novelist explores this theme and how it adds to your appreciation of the novel as a whole.

A rush of adrenaline goes through as my car bolts down the highway. I can hear the enemy car getting closer and closer to me, which only makes me accelerate faster. The car speeds up to me and hammers my car to the side. I’m just about to crash when I am brought back to reality. Looking around my surroundings, my car is not on the highway, but on a deserted road in the cemetery. I’m waiting for my dad, who is sitting in the passenger seat, to give me the keys.

In Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, we meet Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, two very lost men. After publishing the novel, many critics commented that Kerouac’s novel glorifies the deeds of criminal young men living irresponsible lives. Because of the low tolerance for rebellious youth, nowadays most of society would share the critics’ opinion. As Dean and Sal are adults, most of their actions are not inappropriate. Though this is true, the more one reads the novel, one sees just how much of a failure Dean is.

As I was on my way to work today, the car in front of me, suddenly made a stop for no reason. I was on the left lane, and there was truck on the right lane so I couldn’t switch lanes. Instead, I made a sharp turn on to the opposite lane, there wasn’t any cars. That was the dumbest thing that I had ever done, as driving on the opposite lane a car was driving real fast my direction. I stepped on the gas pedal so I could speed up and get back on my regular lane, but the driver that had suddenly stopped decided to step on the gas too. So, as I’m speeding up trying to switch lanes this guy isn’t letting me and the guy that’s heading my way is real close to colliding with me. At this point I’m scared, now I have two choices either I risk it speed

When I was Driving my four wheeler. I was driving the rocky road that leads to my barn, and I wasn't paying attention. I could feel that something bad was going to happen. Like I predicted the four Wheeler's right wheel stick was old and it snapped in half. It broke and turned right. It threw me off, and after that, that's when things start to get bad.

The world has practically ended and it is up to the survivors to choose how they keep

The Road is a novel set after the Earth has been destroyed by some unknown calamity and hence there is ash, darkness and gloom as far as the Man’s eye as well as the reader’s eye can see. This atmosphere that we trudge through with the Man and the Boy throughout the read instantly gives us the feel of a gothic novel. A novel in which all we come across is annihilation, desolation and hopelessness.

There is something about driving fast around sharp curves while poorly belting the words to the popular song you hate, playing on the radio. Even more emotion determining hormones are released when the individual beside you harmonizes your toneless voice while tightly gripping the door handle. We were looking for the closest thing to peace, and found it somewhat by driving off the road and into an endless field. Alex rolled her window down and stared into the opaque air as if it would help her centralize our location. “Get out. Let’s go!” she told me, while climbing through the window to the roof of the car. With the radio still blaring, I met her at the top. We spoke of those things that made us happy, the memories making us sad, those stupid

The Sun Also Rises was written almost twenty years before On the Road but Ernest Hemingway’s novel is more progressive than that of Kerouac. For Jake, the idea of being old-fashioned and comfortable seems out of place in The Sun Also Rises as the women he loves and the friends he hangs out with seem to contradict the life Jake is searching for. In On the Road, Sal faces a similar dilemma as he is pursuing a free-living, no-root-planting lifestyle but everything he encounters is contrary to what he wants. Both of these men are chasing after what it means to live authentically but they are stuck in the wrong book to accomplish their goals. When analyzing Sal and Jake, then widening the view to include their lovers, friends and the novels’ historical

Idolatry and fantasies easily turn to disappointment when those people and experiences we have built up to be extraordinary are revealed to be the product of unrealistic expectations. On the Road by Jack Kerouac follows Sal Paradise as he and Dean Moriarty chase each other across the country and back again searching for something, an “it” that is always changing, always moving, and always hundreds if not thousands of miles away. An experiment in narcissism and the voice of the Beat generation in a transitory post-World War II period in America, Kerouac’s novel depicts a specific view of American culture from the white male perspective. Sal and Dean are not the only characters affected by their travels; everyone around them becomes often unhappy

Throughout On the Road, the influence of the Beat movement’s ideals on Kerouac’s writing is overtly apparent. As the narrator meanders up and down the country, both the main characters’, and the lone hitch hikers they pick up contain an attitude of restlessness which can be seen in their actions and speak. While hitching a ride from a farmer, as Sal and Dean prepare their story to tell the man, he stops them simply asking, “You boys going somewhere, or just going?” This so elegantly captures the internal state of the author coming out bluntly in the work. The beat idealism heavily places importance on personal discovery in any way possible, not necessarily knowing what that path looks like only knowing that you must travel to reach it. Kerouac was distraught with the complacency of living in one place, and set out with no real place to go, and as he writes in response to the farmer “we didn’t know the answer to the question, but it was a damn good question” (Kerouac).

Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road was the anthem for the Beat Generation. Even today, it remains a timeless classic whose message of longing for something more is understood by many, especially those who are fed up with societal expectations. The reader follows narrator Sal Paradise on his adventures on the road, looking for something more than his life in Paterson, New Jersey. Kerouac explores friendship, freedom, coming-of-age, and the search for “it” in Sal’s adventures and interactions.