On the Road, commentary

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Joanna LEROY

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn,
burn, burn […].”

With this long sentence, appearing early on in the most notorious novel of his career,
Jack Kerouac sets the scene for the rest of On the Road, allowing us to understand what type
of book we are about to read: an unconventional one. Figurehead of the Beat Generation, icon
of the Counterculture movement in 1960s America, Jack Kerouac represents the ultimate
rebellion against the established order, against the mainstream— at least, that is how his life
and work were interpreted. Indeed, in 1951, when he first wants to publish On the Road after
finishing it, his editors deem the manuscript unfit for publication because of how chaotic,
unpolished and crude everything is at the time. We must ask ourselves this question: in what
ways does On the Road challenge traditional novelistic conventions, and in what ways does
this resistance to novelistic norms relate to its thematic or stylistic dimensions? Reading and
studying this book, we find that every stylistic aspect of it is closely tied to the themes and
object of the story. We’ll answer this question by gradually reducing the scale of our
formalistic analysis, from the grammar and syntax to what it means to write a book.

The first thing we notice when picking up On the Road is the rhythm of the writing.
With long, crowded sentences that leave you breathless, Kerouac’s prose is dynamic and
flows like a train of thought out of the author’s mind. That is part of what made Jack Kerouac
famous: spontaneity, a key aspect of the Beatnik’s works, deviating from the enduring
conventions of very edited writing— ‘edited’ as in ‘censored in its content and polished in its
form’. Reading On the road, we are inclined to think that the author writes the same way he
speaks, with the same grammar and syntax, as well as with the same honesty. We find, of
course, this spontaneity in the story itself. Sal Paradise’s tale is one of non-stop traveling
across the United States in the eternal pursuit of Dean Moriarty; the story arc is messy,
irregular, full of briefly related events, as if the story was a scaled-up model of the very
sentences it was made of. In the same way Kerouac breaks grammar and syntax rules, Dean
and Sal go against the grain, breaking every societal (and many moral) rules, escaping the sort
of idyllic prison suburban life had become for white Americans in the 1940’s. The characters
in themselves challenge the norm, and so do the way their story was written, but what might
be even more disruptive is the fact that On the Road became a book at all. In the mid-20th
century, the life of ‘hobos, winos and bums’ have that in common with spontaneous writing
that they are never put on display. Abnormal grammar and unpolished syntax stay in diaries;
the life of homeless people, of drug addicts and of dubiously immoral young people stays on
the street – or at least, none of these are ever shown proudly. What is really disruptive about
On the Road, in this respect at least, is not only the book in itself but the status it acquired by
being published and recognized as literature: it not only challenged narrative and stylistic
norms but actually managed to change them, diverting the path of American literature.

In a book so widely recognized as revolutionary and radical, we expect to find it quite

unilateral in its message. However, both in its story and style, On the Road seems to be
constantly swaying between two polar opposites. On the one hand, Kerouac writes with
spontaneity and a general disregard for the narrative and syntactic rules of written speech, yet
on the other hand, we find in On the Road many instances of poetic flourishes, accidental (?)
iambic pentameters mixed with unconventional writing. Similarly, Sal Paradise and Dean
Moriarty dream of freeing themselves from the shackles of American society, jumping from
car to car and from hotel to hotel, while also longing for stability (whether it be consciously or
unconsciously). Kerouac cannot completely get rid of the things he’s learned and read, just as
Sal cannot escape his pining for a settled life beside a good woman. This aspect of the book
shows that its disruptive nature is to be nuanced, keeping in mind that while it is, in essence, a
novel challenging literature, it very much stays a product of these norms, whether they be
stylistic or societal.

From Kerouac’s few works of theory, we know that he believed there was a way to
express oneself purely through the act of writing, to reveal oneself through it. knowing this,
we can consider that On the Road is not really a novel in the typical sense, a book written for
readers to read, but that it redefines it, gives it another purpose—it disrupts its original
meaning. If we follow this line of thought, we can consider that On the Road was written as a
way for Jack Kerouac to express himself freely and not for the benefit of a potential reader.
Besides, there is no morale to this picaresque-like story, no real character progression, not
much has changed from the beginning when you reach the end—Kerouac merely collects
notes from his trips and recalls memories without explicitly gaining any lesson out of it.
Contrary to other novels of the time, On the Road sometimes seems to have no other purpose
than itself, than to be vessel through which Kerouac expresses himself in a society that
prevents him from being himself—that inhibits all his desires and overlooks his traumas; that
guilts him into thinking it’s his fault if he doesn’t succeed. This is symmetrically reflected in
Dean’s and Sal’s behaviour throughout the book: On the Road is a story about self-sabotage
and perfectionism, about wanting to find it, this thing that they have been missing for years—
because there must be something, right? An ‘it’ that would be everything and mean everything
and that would finally make them happy? That’s why they drive all the way down to Mexico
after traveling through the whole country and coming back empty-handed, only to end up
even more miserable than when they first crossed the border.

This book is cathartic, not for the reader, but for the writer. And catharsis is more than
just emotional release: it’s a way to better understand oneself, to get a clearer view of human
condition. On the Road is a conflicting book, in the sense that even in its disruption it sticks
out as an exception, something to be nuanced and studied. Kerouac reinvented both the novel
and the diary, fiction and introspection, challenging what is a novel and what it means to
write.