Jack Kerouac Essays

Romanticism and Modernism as Strange Bedfellows: A Fresh Look of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven! O time In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law and statute, took at once The attraction of a Country in Romance! The Prelude—William Wordsworth (Come in under the shadow of this rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening

Every revolution has begun with a vision. The beat poetry rebellion’s just happened to be opioid-induced. Picture this: the 1950’s. With the threat of nuclear war on the horizon during the Cold War, the citizens of the United States began to detest their government. In 1952, homosexuality was officially classed as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In 1955, Allen Ginsberg first performed Howl, which would soon become the most widely controversial beat

Jack Kerouac and Ernest Hemingway represent their inner state and feelings at the time they lived through their novels. Ernest Hemingway corresponds to the “Lost Generation” of 1920’s and Jack Kerouac corresponds to the “Beat Generation” of 1950’s. Both of these generations were after wars. It is not coincidence, wars make people devastated and lost. People tried to overcome problems and pain through literature and music. Writers put all their emotions on the paper, musicians wrote songs, which described

honesty and vulnerability of their words. These young bohemians would later lead the Beat Movement, which inspired young Americans throughout the county in their search for something more than the consumerism and conformity that plagued their society. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is a transcendent work that

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, wherein he roamed fields and riverbanks by day and night. He wrote his first novel written at the age of eleven. He also kept extensive diaries and newspapers. His parents, Leow and Gabrielle immigrated separately from rural Quebec to New Hampshire. His family French-Canadian dialect of Joual is used in their home. French was the first language to Kerouac. He was educated by Jesuit brothers in Lowell. He said that, he decided to become a writer at

anywhere road for anybody anyhow‟” (Kerouac: 237). These conversations between Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in On the Road shows that Kerouac has used the technique of spontaneous prose to mirror spontaneity in the characters. The characters do not have any direction, but they know that they have to continue on the road, very much like Kerouac and his methods of spontaneous prose. This is reaffirmed in the essay, “Formal experiments of the Beat Generation, focusing on Jack Kerouac’s spontaneous prose”

Author and Beat literary movement pioneer Jack Kerouac adopts what he calls “spontaneous prose” as his own unique style in On the Road. Otherwise known as “stream of consciousness,” this is a method of writing that essentially captures the nebulous and unrelated thoughts that cross the narrator’s mind at any given moment, without break for explanation. Critics are quick to point out that this concept is materialized in the premise of Kerouac’s novel On the Road itself, citing the cross-country trek

Jack Kerouac's On the Road Works Cited Not Included      Jack Kerouac is the first to explore the world of the wandering hoboes in his novel, On the Road. He created a world that shows the lives and motivations of this culture he himself named the 'Beats.' Kerouac saw the beats as people who rebel against everything accepted to gain freedom and expression. Although he has been highly criticized for his lack of writing skills, he made a novel that is both realistic and enjoyable to read. He has

Mark Twain’s influence upon Kerouac is evident in On the Road as is suggested in biographical details. Warren French states in his biography of Kerouac that Kerouac’s first attempt to write a novel at age 11 was “an apparently quite slavish imitation of [Twain’s] Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (4), and Gerald Nicosia notes that Twain was one of the writers that Kerouac followed in his use of “idiomatic American diction” (344). In addition, Kerouac himself warns his editor Helen Taylor

materialistic ideals and flawed social values, they chose to defy the norm. William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg are usually the most remembered from the “Beat generation”. Kerouac is the writer who is credited with the naming of the “Beat generation”, which describes the down-and-out status of himself and his peers during the post-World War II years, (Academy of American Poets). Burroughs and Kerouac are remembered through their works of fiction such as Naked Lunch and On the Road. Ginsburg