Down and Out and “On The Road”
Jack Kerouac’s polarizing novel epitomizes the reckless search for identity in post-World War II America.
[N]ews came that Dean [...] was coming to New York for the first time. (Kerouac 3)
Hitching a ride
I was sort of aware of On The Road’s polarized reputation before starting to read the book. Finishing the novel, I understand where people are coming from. At many points, Jack Kerouac muses on the human condition to the point of being pretentious, the writing style leans toward rushed than spontaneous, and the novel itself exclaims all the proclivities and prejudices of 1940s to 1950s America.
Acknowledging these faults and limitations, I recognize this novel for its place as a reflection of a generation gone and times long past, of searching for the American Dream in its absence. Sal and Dean’s frenetic road trips back and forth across America would appear impractical and misguided to us at present, minding all the costs needed to travel. The main characters are also remarkably flawed, spiraling off each other into self-centeredness and debauchery while purporting to be connected with the rest of humanity. This novel is as much a celebration of youth as it is an indictment of reckless abandon.
At many points, the novel drags in pace through narrations and expositions that do little to advance the plot. To be fair, the plot is likewise mostly absent in the same way that the characters are generally one-dimensional and paper thin. Ultimately, I think this is Kerouac’s intention: to capture the exhilaration and excitement of leaving everything behind, living in the moment, and not stopping to think until afterwards to “figure the losses and figure the gain that [...] was in there somewhere too” (97).
If my goal in reading the novel was to dwell on its own merits, I would be inclined as many others to give a lower rating. I did have a different purpose for reading, thus my favorable reception of the book.
Sal and Dean and America
I already knew that the story ends with Sal and Dean’s complete falling apart. Their friendship was not sustainable. Their relationship was weakly founded on their shared respect for each other’s faults, with Dean finding a like-minded friend in Sal, and Sal admiring Dean’s hunger for life. In the end, Sal wanted a quiet life with a woman in whom he can rest his soul (105), while Dean was driven by (and cannot escape) the road (254). With this knowledge, the novel does not read for me as simply a road trip adventure but a retrospective on loss, drifting apart, regret, and tentative wisdom gained from realizing what one really wants in life. Every mention of eternal friendship and brotherhood is then recast as futile promises in light of the knowledge of the relationship’s ultimate collapse.
Knowing the story and author’s context also illuminates the choices made for the narrative, whether accidental or intentional. This is a novel borne out of the disillusionment brought about by the Second World War, serving as an attempt to look for meaning after a time of meaninglessness, a struggle for identity and independence to defy authorities that enabled such conditions, and a search for meaningful connections to replace relationships lost through war and trauma.
Against this backdrop, Dean and Sal are not adventurous travelers but desperately lost souls. Their loose characterization emphasizes how they live hollow lives with no sense of depth or direction. They go on road trips not for fun as they contentedly convince themselves, but (as Sal often believes about the hitchhikers and travelers he meets in Part 1) to run away from themselves. For them, the final trip to Mexico made them feel complete and connected to the world, but they are merely consumed by pleasure and distracted from the reality that nothing meaningful awaits them. Dean alternates between Camille and Inez as he fancies but has no family to rely on, having burned all bridges behind him. Sal has loose networks of friends across America, but moves from state to state feeling never at home anywhere.
Ultimately, Kerouac’s spontaneous prose is not about excitement or embodiment, but confusion and displacement. Indeed, Sal obsesses about Dean until the end. Not Dean the person who left him while ill in Mexico—but Dean the idea, the feeling, the impulse that gave him something (maybe even anything) to look forward to in the almost four years they knew each other.
Is On The Road a contender for being a Great American Novel? Perhaps not, by a long shot. Does it concretely capture the anxieties and aspirations of a generation within a tumultuous period of American history? It does, and the counterculture movements in the U.S. that borrowed from the Beat generation well into the 1970s attest to this work’s resonance across time.
This road trip is precipitous and impulsive, racing quickly and out of control to its inevitable conclusion. Kerouac invites us to join the ride, but pushes us to pursue more meaningful journeys than Sal and Dean accomplished.
Other work On The Road reminded me of
Conceptual artist Joseph Beuys’s 1974 performance I Like America and America Likes Me where he lived in an enclosed space with a live coyote for three days. Beuys is Sal and Dean, the coyote is America, themselves, whatever they are running from.
J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in The Rye (published in full in 1951) similarly deals with the angst of youth. It shares On The Road’s characteristic of resonating differently depending on the age when you read it.
Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting Nighthawks is set in a diner where people are supposed to be relaxed, but no one is happy here. Sal and Dean frequently find themselves in bars and saloons, but the joy is fleeting.
Radiohead’s song “Fake Plastic Trees” from their 1995 album The Bends dwells on the feelings of inauthenticity, alienation, disillusionment, and resignation—the same states that underlie Kerouac’s work.
Reviewed 25 June 2025, 4/5.
Kerouac, Jack. On The Road. Penguin UK, 2000.