Sharon's Term Paper

Sharon Peng

Term Paper – On the Road and Dostoyevsky

            Published in the late 1950’s, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road explores the whirlwind era of the jazzy Beat Generation. Countering the established, mainstream way of doing things, the younger generation rebelled to create their own freer, meandering way of exploring and living life. This deep search for the meaning of life and one’s place in society is exemplified in the novel’s protagonist, Sal Paradise, and his constant reliance on friend Dean Moriarty; their intense quest for enjoyment of, and perspective about, life brings them around various cities in the United States into countless predicaments and experiences over the course of several years. Despite various personal problems at home, both never turn down an offer to take a trip ‘on the road’, excitedly leaving without any reservations, worries or preparation for the road ahead. Such behavior, while impulsive, is easily explainable through Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s analysis of the human nature in his novel, Notes from the Underground; his outline of human behavior explore inherent characteristics that define a person and differentiate them from each other and other animals. While these traits all manifest in Sal and Dean, several form the core elements to which their carefree outlook and exuberant behavior stem from.

            The underlying topic throughout Dostoyevsky’s novel is that man is only self-interested in himself to the point that everything he does is solely to further his own status and experience. This resonates in the relationship between Dean and Sal, and why the two are always together. It is clear from the start that Dean does not consider Sal his equal socially, while Sal does not regard Dean as his equal intellectually; the reason for their connection is thus because both need each other to cover up the area he is respectively lacking. Having recently divorced, Sal is searching for a new, refreshing experience, one that helps him leave his structured, tedious life behind –Dean gives this to him on a silver platter, “Somewhere along the lines, I knew there’d be girls, visions, everything…would be handed to me…” (Kerouac 7). Sal knows that he himself cannot survive on the road alone or ever come in close contact with the more impulsive ones without Dean’s help. For all that he is searching for a new life, Sal also remains true to his roots in starting another book, one that he finds inspiration for through Dean’s life. In sticking with Dean, Sal joins in, in an almost ‘leeching’ manner, on his rambunctious lifestyle, both learning to enjoy life himself and taking notes on Dean’s interactions with his other friends. However, this relationship goes both ways; Dean allows the socially inferior Sal to stay by his side because he needs Sal’s resources. As the educated one, Sal is more endowed financially to fund their trips, and intellectually to obtain a job. In fact, the first time Dean scouted out Sal was because the former had no other place to live, and wanted Sal to teach him how to write. There has also been countless times where the pair stops by Sal’s friends’ houses just to pick up money and then continue on the road again. 

            A second focal point that Dostoyevsky’s novel centers on is the fact that humans in general do not follow rationale, thus willingly walking straight into situations of self-harm. The reason for this behavior is not, as Dostoyevsky analyzes, due to unawareness or lack of understanding; rather, even though they know what will happen, humans purposefully choose to go against what is in their best interest simply because they can –it serves to reassure them that they can still exercise their own free will. The idea of the Beat Generation embodies this; just like Dean and Sal, the entire young generation rebelled against the ‘safety’ of the plain and normal paradigm of that time. In the search for the meaning of life, they experimented with relatively freer, but taboo and more unsafe, activities, such as constant usage of drugs, in an effort to exercise their free will in not being relegated to the same sensible, tedious lifestyle of the earlier generation.

            Similarly, Dean and Sal consistently go back onto the road in an effort to combat the humdrum of ‘normal’ life, even when they know it is completely illogical. The pair travel through places they’ve never even heard about and with hitchhikers they don’t know when there is no one else to bring them anywhere; in addition, they do not worry about what they are doing, ignoring all the risks and consequences of such actions like “foolishly squandering” (Kerouac 29) money at clubs. Even with the little they have, and the knowledge that they should budget even a dollar or two, Dean and Sal always end up with nothing by the end of the night. In the later half of the novel, the two even leave their families who need them behind, going against the families’ wishes and abandoning the stability of domestic life for the impulsive freedom of the road. In fact, the first time Sal leaves, his aunt tells him not to as that Dean would get into trouble, but Sal still chooses to leave, knowingly picking the life on the road because he can. Although he starts off his travels with the claims of self-actualization in the first half of the book, Sal seems to actually want only to follow Dean; even though, according to his desires to start a new, refreshing and exciting life doing things he’s never done before, it would be in his best interest to take up all opportunities for an adventure presented during his initial travels, Sal does not. When confronted with the chance to join a traveling circus or take a free trip to California with an immensely entertaining, wandering group, Sal rejects all offers because he wants to follow Dean specifically. However, this directionless search for Dean’s respect causes Sal to abandon older, truer friends from his previous lifestyle, like Chad and Roland Major; by preferring to be with Dean, who is a considerably less sound and more impulsive friend, Sal rejects the reasonable choices that would have kept him safer.

            The idea that Sal has begun to make more self-harming decisions feeds directly into Dostoyevsky’s analysis of impulsive versus cautious human behavior. These actions do not arise for no reason; in fact, those who normally fight for what they believe in only do so because they are too ignorant to see the whole idea and weigh all the options. Dostoyevsky compounds this conclusion by contributing his own inability to act to being too smart. His own knowledge and constant thinking render him, and other intellectually superior humans, too perceptive to just pick one side of the argument and act ‘blindly’ as the impulsive people do. Sal, in the beginning of the novel, is the embodiment this latter attitude; he never ventures to the craziness of a life on the road, partially because of his obligations at home, but also partially because he was too indecisive, “always vaguely planning and never taking off” (Kerouac 1). He had worried too much and never got anything done, a sign of his intelligence.

            On the Road, however, marks the transition from Sal’s cautious, conservative lifestyle to one of gambles and risks. Upon the divorce, he decides to finally throw away any inhibitions and set out. Although difficult at first, as evidenced by Sal’s misery during the first few days after realizing his preconceived notions were incorrect, Sal later adjusts to his new lifestyle by using Dean as a guide to living life on the edge. The subsequent more decisive, albeit wild, behavior that results is, as Dostoyevsky analyzed, representative of Sal’s freer nature in which he is no longer overwhelmed by constant overthinking, choosing instead to make decisions in the spur of the moment without thinking of the consequences. While Sal chooses this lifestyle, however, Dean embraces this decisive, impulsive nature because it is the only one that has ever made sense to him. In accordance with Dostoyevsky’s observations, Dean has never considered any other life because he is simply unable to picture himself without being on the road. Just as the generation before the Beat had only accepted a sensible and structured society, Dean can only appreciate wild risks; he is too set in his ways and stubborn to accept anything else.

            For this reason, Dean also embodies Dostoyevsky’s idea of walls; like much of the Beat generation, Dean tries to go against the structured society of the time, breaking down the wall of conformity. In doing so, however, he is setting up a different one –the belief that only being on the road will give him the happiness he wants. Even suffering from withdrawal-like symptoms and depression whenever he has somewhat settled down with his family for a short time, Dean feeds off of being on the road to such an extent that he cannot function well outside of it, associating things like sex, drugs, alcohol and partying as strictly on-the-road experiences. He has rejected the typical work- and family-oriented lifestyle so much to the extent that he feels restricted in even the remotest settings of it. Thus he consistently aims to leave his settled-down life behind, opting to hide behind the “tranquillizing, morally soothing” (Dostoyevsky 9) wall that the road is the place to be.

            The last of Dostoyevsky’s key arguments, that the journey matters more than the destination, rings true throughout the novel as well - Dean and Sal keep heading off with a final destination in mind, but don’t worry about how they get there because the journey and the ‘during’ aspect of their life on the road is what keeps them alive. As Sal succinctly says upon arriving in Denver without a clue what their next step was, it was “no matter, the road is life” (Kerouac 200). In fact, both are stricken by depression or restlessness once they actually reach their destination; as Dostoyevsky theorized about human nature in general, people are afraid to finally reach their final goal because it means the end of the excitement and danger they all crave. After weeks and months of partying and living recklessly, Dean and Sal constantly return home to dissatisfying normalcy –the moments on the road are what truly define them as people and encourage personal growth through observing the world around them and searching for the meaning of life. In fact, traveling everywhere and then returning home or reaching their final destination has been so disappointing to the point that, in the Part IV of the novel, Dean and Sal even try to find answers about life in Mexico, a different country entirely. While Sal eventually matures and readjusts to ‘normal’ living by the end of the novel, he spends much of its entirety with Dean as they focus on the road life itself, rather than the destination.

            Sal’s thoughts as he is on the road, as exemplified by his musing “…why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you’re alive to see?” (Kerouac 126), embody many of Dostoyevsky’s theories about human nature as presented in his novel Notes from the Underground. The mention of unpredictable events waiting to surprise references not only Dean and Sal’s, but also the entire Beat Generation’s, search for the meaning of life and how to live vicariously. This desire to stretch beyond society’s norm of structure and ordered life parallels Dostoyevsky’s argument of the walls that exist to limit humans as soon as another one is broken. Man is also self-interested, but does not always follow rationale –while Dean and Sal travel together because both find an advantage in the other for doing so, they are already defying logic by even being on the road without backup plans and without a worry, partying all their money away. The closing lines of the novel, in which Sal bids goodbye to Dean, reference Sal’s new maturity from his time on the road. And while Sal has discovered who he is and how to be content with a normal life, Dean is still forever limited by his wall that being on the road is the only source of happiness.

Citations

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground. New York: Dover Publications, 1992. Print.

Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York, NY, U.S.A.: Penguin, 1991. Print.