After listening to B.Olive tell me that story it got me thinking of what event or idea shaped and changed my life. Why do I enjoy writing and reading so much? What do I have in my past that makes me want to create stories to tell to people? There is always a story behind a story that details the spark that started you off on a path. It could be a glove that your dad gave you that made you want to play baseball. Your parents use to listen to records of great music and it inspired you to create music. Or maybe one day you picked up a book and couldn't put it down. It was the tale within the pages of that book that made you embark on your own journey to create something for others to read.
It was the summer of my senior year in high school when I went over to my friend Danny Arias's house. He had just finished a book when I arrived and flipped it onto the table. He told me he was going to get ready and disappeared upstairs. I sat down and examined the book that he was reading. The book was On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I turned the book over and on the back was an excerpt from the first line of the book, “I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead…” I had just recently spilt up with the first girl I had ever loved and reading this passage shook every fiber in my body. Inside I felt a loneliness and complex feeling that I was unable to shake and reading that line caused a stir inside of me that I had never felt. I quickly turned the book over and dove into the story of Sal Paradise, his travels, and the cast of characters that filled the American landscape.
Immediately, I had a connection with the narrator of the novel, Sal Paradise. Not only had Sal been through a dismal separation, but he also yearned for more in his life beyond the monotony of his small New Jersey town. Still, it took more than a fleeting hope to arouse Sal to pursue his dream; his dream needed a kick start in the form of Dean Moriarty, an adventurous, happy-go-lucky mad man, for Sal to begin his life on the road. For Sal himself even explained, “I’d often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off”. I felt the truth of this line cast a shadow upon me because I am just like Sal in always planning and dreaming, but never seizing the moment or following through with my dreams. In two lines Kerouac had tapped into my psyche and I felt like he was writing each line specifically for me. In my head I heard a public announcement- “The role of Sal Paradise will be played tonight by Mark Cuen!” From that point on I placed myself within the story as its main character.
Quickly, the story finds Sal being befriended by Dean Moriarty, who is described as “a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him”. Kerouac creates these genuine characters of dreamers, thinkers, and seekers of a higher truth that are trapped in a culture that binds and restricts their burgeoning sense of self. In Dean, Sal sees someone that is everything that he is not. Dean is a flawed and troubled hero, but a hero to Sal and countless other's who would love to be a flawed, unpredictable traveler. Dean was born on the road, hopping trains with his father as a youngster, working odd jobs, and sleeping with various women all while making a name for himself everywhere he went. Dean was creating a catalog of a life that was being lived to the fullest on his terms. Sal deeply admired Dean and his lifestyle of being free of the rules that most people not only abide by, but cater too. Compared to the vanilla origins of his own life, Sal begins to yearn to be more like Dean and live life as an adventure on the road. Dean has so much life experience and energy that it is hard for anyone not to become intoxicated by his fervent spirit and manic zeal for life. Dean displays the classic idiom of women wanting to be with him and men wanting to be him. A clear illustration of how Dean operates can be shown by a scene Sal describes in Denver when Dean is simultaneously dating two women, working on the side, and staying up all night to have deep conversation with his friend, Carlos Marx, in an attempt to become more knowledgeable and to obtain a higher level of self. It is men like Dean Moriarty that makes men like Sal and myself push to be free of social restraints and travel the roads of experience.
Another story element Kerouac uses that enthralls my senses is his description of the road and the various places that Sal comments and visits on his trip. It must be noted that the structure in which Kerouac uses consists of long sentences and paragraphs that move smoothly and subtly through the novel it is as if you are riding in the truck bed yourself passing by, “the inky night of New Mexico, or the gray dawn of Dalhart Texas, and then the bleak Sunday afternoon of Oklahoma, finally into the nightfall of Kansas” with the likes of Mississippi Gene, Montana Slim, and Old Bull Lee. The road so thoroughly pleases and intoxicates Kerouac that he writes of Sal feeling as he woke up, “the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was”. Having just traveled for the first time and finding himself at the center of America it is this virtual crossroads of the past and the future. Many a man has traveled that very same road in search of a brighter future- Ben Franklin as a postmaster; George Washington as an Indian-fighter; Daniel Boone finding the Gap- for Sal it is much more than looking for gold or the promise of land. Rather this experience is a spiritual moment of freedom, a conscious moment of self-awakening. Sal has a rebirth brought about by this newfound liberty the road has afforded him to travel when and where he wants; the road is a sea of endless possibilities. Sal quips , “What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people… -it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the sky”. Every moment that is experienced is the next chance to turn the page on a chapter of your life and travel down another road. Kerouac frames that sentiment perfectly with the (mis)adventures of Sal and his traveling companions throughout the novel.
This novel I feel truly saved me in a time when I saw only darkness. I, much like Sal, had become sick and it seemed that I was going to drown in my own pit of despair. Then Jack Kerouac tapped into my psyche and opened up a world that is limitless in its ability to amaze and entertain. I continually find myself flipping through the pages of this book and discovering the characters, the settings, and the dialogue just as exhilarating and honest as the first time I read it. The authenticity of the American Dream and its different interpretation creates a spirit within me that is encouraged and rejuvenated when life seems to be static or lost. On The Road is truly inspiring and is a book that revitalized my heart and my soul, leaving this quote as the indelible thought ingrained into my heart, “’The last thing is what you can’t get, Carlo. Nobody can get to the last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.’”
All of us will have an encounter with a seminal event, whether its taping SNL to relive each episode, watching a skyscraper being built, or just picking up a book that will shape or influence our lives in a way we never thought possible. And when you do end up catching it, that formative moment, it's something you will never forget.
All of us will have an encounter with a seminal event, whether its taping SNL to relive each episode, watching a skyscraper being built, or just picking up a book that will shape or influence our lives in a way we never thought possible. And when you do end up catching it, that formative moment, it's something you will never forget.
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