But his words fall on deaf ears: She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when he made life so sad Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together: sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk- real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.
The sense of disillusionment that comes after an anonymous and meaningless coupling is conveyed strongly in these lines. There is no exaltation, just two human beings who have sought refuge in each other without having any prior knowledge of the other person.
At a time in Ireland when there is so much talk of anonymous teenage sexual relations, we might do well to dwell on this sort of passage when warning of the dangers to which this kind of sexual activity can lead.
Because it no longer means anything to most teenagers to state that sex before marriage and without love is morally wrong - it has also to be put across what despair and anguish it can bring. The pressures on young people to conform have always been intense. But to be sophisticated, it is not necessary to be sexually active.
When this experience happened to Sal, he was in his twenties and so capable of rationalising it. God is mentioned in the passage above also for the first time. He recurs intermittently throughout the novel. That said, there is absolutely no reference to Church services or formal prayer, which play no role in the characters' lives.
Spirituality is present in poetry, music, nature, fraternity, innocence. God is a minor character in the book, forming a kind of subplot to the main action, in the background and yet somehow always present. God is present also in the quest on which the characters embark- this is especially true of Dean, the focal point of the novel.
The product of a dysfunctional home - he never saw his mother's face and his alcoholic father spent his time riding freights, working as a scullion in railroad kitchens, drinking himself to death- he had problems with the police from an early age.
In prison, he promised himself the right to live. The lack of love in the home led him to seek it from any possible source: 'Every new girl, every new wife, every new child was an addition to his bleak impoverishment. Always on the move towards a goal he will never achieve, he knows that the joy is in the search and not in the finding. People are attracted to him in the beginning because of his restless spirit, his light- heartedness, his charm.
But there comes a time when he disgusts his former friends. The narrator, Sal, comments: I suddenly realised that Dean, by virtue of his enormous series of sins, was becoming the Idiot, the Imbecile, the Saint of the lot He incites bitterness, recriminations, mo- rality, sadness in equal measure and yet he is capable ofleaving all that behind him to enjoy the ecstatic joy of pure being. When Galatea opines that the sooner he's dead the better, Sal inter- jects: 'Very well, then,' I said, 'but now he's alive and I'll bet you want to know what he does next and that's because he's got the secret that we're all busting to find and it's splitting his head wide open and if he goes mad don't worry, it won't be your fault but the fault of God.
Dean's secret- what is this enigmatic secret? We are led to believe that he is some sort of guru, a type of lay priest whose vocation is not to provide answers but to force people to think about their lives. It is all disconcerting, confusing, open to many levels of interpre- tation. I don't presume to provide solutions to questions that Mr Kerouac left unanswered. In fact, the book takes the reader on a journey through the vast continent that is America, through its countryside, its cities, its beauty and its ugliness.
The book does however portray very well how the Beat movement during that time impacted the people involved, but the endless rambling on and on and repeating himself, associating with horrible people etc. That being said - I read it because I took a class in Beat art and literature, so I learned a lot from the book too. It has it good parts and its bad, and it also involves a severely narcissistic character which was interesting to read about.
I had to go back several pages whenever I picked it up again just to remember the context. See all 24 questions about On the Road…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of On the Road. Sep 29, Jessica rated it did not like it Recommends it for: fourteen-year-old assholes.
Shelves: bad-reads , dicklits. This is probably the worst book I have ever finished, and I'm forever indebted to the deeply personality-disordered college professor who assigned it, because if it hadn't been for that class I never would've gotten through, and I gotta tell you, this is the book I love to hate.
I'd be lying if I said there aren't parts of this book that're so bad they're good -- good as in morbidly fascinating, in the manner of advanced-stage syphilis slides from seventh-grade health class.
Keroac's ode to the sad-eyed Negro is actually an incredible, incredible example of For the record. So we can all see it clearly, and KNOW. Please don't get me wrong! My disproportionately massive loathing for Jack Kerouac has zero to do with his unenlightened racial views.
I mean, it was written in the fifties, and anyway, it's great that he was able to articulate these ideas so honestly. No, the real reason I hate this book so much is that it established a deeply retarded model of European-American male coolness that continues to plague our culture today. I could go into a lot more depth on this topic, but it's come to my attention that I've been using my horrible addiction to Bookster to avoid the many obligations and responsiblities of my daily life, to which I should now return.
And for that very reason, especially considering its serious and detrimental impact on western civilization, I definitely recommend that you read it, if you have not suffered that grave misfortune already. View all comments. Apr 24, Adam rated it did not like it Shelves: fiction. I'm supposed to like On the Road , right? Well, I don't. I hate it and I always have. There are a lot of reasons why I hate it. I find Kerouac's attitude toward the world pathetically limited and paternalistic.
In On the Road he actually muses about how much he wishes that he could have been born "a Negro in the antebellum South," living a simple life free from worry, and does so seemingly without any sense of irony. On every page, the book is about how Kerouac a young, white, middle-class, I'm supposed to like On the Road , right? On every page, the book is about how Kerouac a young, white, middle-class, solipsistic alcoholic feels, and nothing more. But that's only one reason I hate this book.
The main reason I hate it is because, for me, reading Kerouac's prose is almost physically painful. He was a pretentious, self-important bore who produced some of the most painfully bad and inconsequential prose of the 20th century. Or any century. View all 93 comments. Feb 25, Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it really liked it Shelves: reviews.
This novel deserves to lounge around in a five star hotel rather than languish in a lone star saloon. Disclaimer Please forgive my review.
It is early morning and I have just woken up with a sore head, an empty bed and a full bladder. Confesssion Let me begin with a confession that dearly wants to become an assertion. I probably read this book before most of you were born. So there! Wouldn't you love to say that! If only I had the courage of my convictions. Instead, I have only convictions, and they are many and varied. However, I am sure that by the end of my this sentence, I shall be released. Elevated to the Bar I read OTR in my teens, which were spread all over the end of the 60's and the beginning of the 70's.
My life was dominated by Scouting for Boys. I mean the book, not the activity. My mantra was "be prepared", although at the time I didn't realise that this actually meant "be prepared for war". After reading OTR, my new mantra was "be inebriated".
Mind you, I had no idea what alcohol tasted like, but it sounded good. Gone were two boys in a tent and three men in a boat. OTR was about trying to get four beats in a bar, no matter how far you'd travelled that day. Typing or Writing Forget whether it was just typing rather than writing.
That was just Truman Capote trying to dot one of Dorothy Parker's eyes. This is like focusing on the mince instead of the sausage. It was about dynamism, not passivity. It wasn't about a stream of consciousness, it was about a river of activity. It was about "white light, white heat", not "white picket fences". Savouring the Sausage OK, your impressions are probably more recent than mine.
Mine are memories that have been influenced by years of indulgence. I do maintain that alcohol kills the unhealthy brain cells first, so it is actually purifying your brain. I simply ask that you overlook the mince and savour the sausage. Beyond Ephemerality I would like to make one last parting metaphor.
I have misappropriated it from the musician, Dave Graney. He talks about "feeling ephemeral, but looking eternal". Dave comes from the Church of the Latter Day Hipsters. He is way cooler than me, he even looks great in leather pants, in a spivvy kinda way.
However, I think the point he was making if not, then the point I am making is that most of life is ephemeral. It just happens and it's gone forever. However, in Dave's case, the way he looks, the way he feels, he turns it into something eternal.
It's his art, his music, our pleasure, our memories at least until we die. Footnotes on Cool Creativity and style are our last chance attempt to defy ephemerality and mortality and become eternal. Yes, all that stuff between the bookends of OTR might be typing, it might be preserving ephemerality that wasn't worthy or deserving. However, the point is the attempt to be your own personal version of cool.
However, I am trying to live life beyond the ephemeral. That's what OTR means to me. If it doesn't mean that to you, hey, that's alright. I'm OK, you're OK. It's cool. Original posted: March 01, Shelves: in-by-about-america , and-more , loathed-this-book , timeless-classics , not-worth-it.
This is the book which has given me anxiety attacks on sleepless nights. This is the book which has glared at me from its high pedestal of classical importance in an effort to browbeat me into finally finishing it.
And this is that book which has shamed me into feigning an air of ignorance every time I browsed any of the countless books-to-read-before-you-die lists. Yes Jack Kerouac, you have tormented me for the past 3 years and every day I couldn't summon the strength to open another page o This is the book which has given me anxiety attacks on sleepless nights.
Yes Jack Kerouac, you have tormented me for the past 3 years and every day I couldn't summon the strength to open another page of 'On the Road' and subject my brain to the all-too-familiar torture of Sal's sleep-inducing, infuriatingly monotonous narration. Finally, I conquer you after nearly 3 years of dithering. I am the victorious one in the battle in which you have relentlessly assaulted my finer senses with your crassness and innate insipidity and dared me to plod on.
I can finally beat my chest in triumph ugh pardon the Tarzan-ish metaphor but a 1-star review deserves no better and announce to the world that I have finished reading 'On the Road'.
Oh what an achievement! And what a monumental waste of my time. Dear Beat Generation classic, I can finally state without any fear of being called out on my ignorance that I absolutely hated reading you. Every moment of it. And even that makes it sound much more interesting and less offensive than it actually is. In terms of geographical sweep, the narrative covers nearly the whole of America in the 50s weaving its way in and out of Los Angeles and New York and San Francisco and many other major American cities.
Through the eyes of Salvatore 'Sal' Paradise, a professional bum, we are given an extended peek into the lives of a band of merry have-nots, their hapless trysts with women, booze, drugs, homelessness, destitution, jazz as they hitchhike and motor their way through the heart of America.
Sounds fascinating right? Ayn Rand will vehemently disagree though. But no, it's anything but that. Instead this one just shoves Jack Kerouac's internalized white superiority, sexism and homophobia right in the reader's face in the form of some truly bad writing.
This book might as well come with a caption warning any potential reader who isn't White or male or straight. I understand that this was written way before it became politically incorrect to portray women in such a poor light or wistfully contemplate living a "Negro's life" in the antebellum South.
But there's an obvious limit to the amount of his vile ruminations I can tolerate. They picked cotton with the same God-blessed patience their grandfathers had practiced in ante-bellum Alabama. God-blessed patience? Every female character in this one is a vague silhouette or a caricature of a proper human being.
Marylou, Camille, Terry, Galatea are all frighteningly one-dimensional - they never come alive for the reader through Sal's myopic vision. They are merely there as inanimate props reduced to the status of languishing in the background and occasionally allowed to be in the limelight when the men begin referring to them as if they were objects. Either they are 'whores' for being as sexually liberated as the men are or they are screaming wives who throw their husbands out of the house for being jobless, cheating drunks or they are opportunistic and evil simply because they do not find Sal or Dean or Remy or Ed or any of the men in their lives to be deserving of their trust and respect, which they truly aren't.
And sometimes, they are only worthy of only a one or two-line description like the following:- " I had been attending school and romancing around with a girl called Lucille, a beautiful Italian honey-haired darling that I actually wanted to marry" Look at Sal talking about a woman as if she were a breed of cat he wanted to rescue from the animal shelter. And this is not to mention the countless instances of 'get you a girl', 'get girls', 'Let's get a girl' and other minor variations of the same strewn throughout the length of the book and some of Sal's thoughts about 'queers' which are equally revolting.
Maybe I am too much of a non-American with no ties to a real person who sees the Beat era through the lenses of pure nostalgia or maybe I am simply incapable of appreciating the themes of youthful wanderlust and living life with a perverse aimlessness or maybe it's the flat writing and appalling representation of women. Whatever the real reason s maybe, I can state with conviction that this is the only American classic which I tried to the best of my abilities to appreciate but failed.
Cat Attendant We know this review is good because it's roused the sad, lonely, angry men, and that makes me laugh. We know this review is good because it's roused the sad, lonely, angry men, and that makes me laugh. This review is both much more entertaining and better written than the actual book.
Can we add pedophile to your list please? Jun 09, Jahn Sood rated it really liked it. I've been thinking about this book a lot lately, so I figured that I'd go back and write something about it. When I first read this book, I loved it as a piece of art, but its effect on me was different than I expected. So many people hail Kerouac as the artist who made them quit their jobs and go to the road, become a hippie or a beat and give up the rest. When I read it though, I had been completely obsessed with hippie culture for a long time, and it caused me to steer away from it for a whil I've been thinking about this book a lot lately, so I figured that I'd go back and write something about it.
When I read it though, I had been completely obsessed with hippie culture for a long time, and it caused me to steer away from it for a while. While I thought that it would be a rollicking tale of freedom and glory, I found that all of Dean's conquests were tainted by the fact that he had to take advantage of other people every step of the way. He was a hugely entertaining character, but would have been a terrible friend, lover, or even acquaintance.
From the women he married to gas station attendents, right down to Sal Paradise himself, Dean drained everything that he was right out of other people, and it eventually ruined him. It left him beat Once I stepped back a little from the awe at Dean's greatness, this book was really sad, and it caused me to put away that romanticism for a while.
Now, 2 years later, though, On the Road is coming back to me full on. I didn't escape the total wonder at the Beats and the road. I have been on the road myself for the last 2 months and have a long way to go before I get back home, and I am constantly aware that the the way was paved by Kerouac and the rest of the crazy geniuses of his generation. The road is every bit as romantic as Sal Paradise made it out to be, and its glory far out weighs the short comings of Dean as a friend.
I mean, the road is a lot like Dean, it takes a lot out of you, but you get addicted to it and obsessed with it and can't let it go, and I don't think there's any other way about it.
I am in love with America for the first time. Now that I've seen it, driven across and up and down, around and over America, I find it sublime and incredible. I think that Kerouac and his friends might've been the first to see that. Maybe not. Maybe they are just part of all of American history America is something to dream about. It is worthy every exuberant and formerly offensive "I'm proud" sticker that's plastered on the back of a pick up truck.
And Kerouac saw that first hand. So, it seems, that there is a certain tragedy in this book, but that it is less important than the unavoidable glory that you come to associate with the road and freedom after following these guys on their crazy adventure. I think this book should be read by everyone who wants to know about America. View all 11 comments. Feb 13, Mark Lawrence rated it it was ok. I think this book, which launched Kerouac's career and gave him insta-fame, has to be seen as a product of its time.
I found it a chore to read, a long dull boast about a series of road trips. It's populated by vacuous largely despicable alcoholics with zero impulse control and an unshakeable belief that they are deeply profound observers of the human condition. One saving grace of the book is that Kerouac has an unusual writing style with a strong voice that he uses well, especially when describi I think this book, which launched Kerouac's career and gave him insta-fame, has to be seen as a product of its time.
One saving grace of the book is that Kerouac has an unusual writing style with a strong voice that he uses well, especially when describing the landscapes and cities as his avatar rushes to and fro across America. The other is that the 'shocking' nature of the book back in , immersed in drugs, alcohol, and sexuality, five years before a court case finally allowed the rather tame Lady Chatterly's Lover to be published in the UK, 32 years after it was written, has been replaced with a certain historical interest in the modern reader seeing how things worked over 60 years ago.
We also see the young white male characters mixing with African Americans and Hispanics decades before the civil rights movement. Kerouac's avatar, Sal Paradise, follows Dean Moriarty, a hollow messiah of the age, and together they haunt jazz and bop clubs trying to capture "it" and waxing ecstatically about saxophonists blowing.
We see several years of the pair's directionless lives, Dean oscillating between three women, spawning and abandoning children, dropping everything repeatedly on a whim to cross America east to west or back again, and finally to Mexico City.
The pair cheat and steal their way while claiming to savour the goodness of those they encounter. Dean has to be warned off the 13 year old daughter of a friend, and later in Mexico they sleep with 15 year old prostitutes.
Already have an account? Sign in. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Literature Poetry Lit Terms Shakescleare. Download this LitChart! Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Our Teacher Edition on On the Road can help. Themes All Themes. Symbols All Symbols. Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. Are you sure you've placed your question in the proper category? On the Road[The Run, 4]. On the Road study guide contains a biography of Jack Kerouac, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.
On the Road essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Remember me. Forgot your password? Buy Study Guide. Chapter 4? Or this is a series Book 4?
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