The Beat Generation In Jack Kerouac's On The Road

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Such was progressed of a time when stories were meant to placate, in exchange for meaning, and a “storybook ending” for Claire and Milt was an unquestioned endgame, as originated by our collective, albeit tedious fascination with the base romantic. This wasn’t to subsist indefinitely, for just a few decades later that the so-called “Beat Generation” had established a firm hand in the imaginations of the poor and downtrodden, particularly in the creative minds of young, masculine types that’d been left wearied by the state of their surroundings, and instead gone on to reject this status quo, and define their meaning for themselves. Situated at the forefront of the period’s literature, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road employs a like-minded strategy, if but a bit more purposefully aimless, to see the “Beat Generation” to its fullest extent; from idealistic roots and origins, to the seedy underbelly consisting of drugs, sex, and alcohol, which saw much of how it’d transpired. For Kerouac’s leading man (really, just a synonymous placeholder for himself, as was for all the events and figures contained here), Sal Paradise is featured being the more subdued, yet nonetheless thoughtful answer for what his counterpart and ill-tempered idol, Dean Moriarty, brings epitomized that same “active rebellion,” even if it’s unnoticed. Far as…show more content…
Instead, their placement within the internal, and not external, is mostly at hand. Sal, for his complete detachment, embarked upon early in his travels, and his life, is contradicted by the longing he feels not to belong with any one marginalized group, but to share their bond, and become justified in it. Likewise, he expends so much energy in hoisting Dean aloft as some pinnacle of virtue that it’s too late when he finally realizes that he’s being pulled down with
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