Term Paper Final Draft

Jonathan Chow

5/4/14

Period 1

Kerouac's notion of time seems to be that of an entity that is constantly moving and constantly taking others with it. During the novel, Sal feels many different emotions concerning this reality. As he sees his friends growing smaller in the rear window of a car as he leaves them, he laments not being able to be a part of their lives permanently. Yet, the madness he seeks makes such permanence is impossible to achieve. This is also the case in the memories that Sal and Dean continually share. They cannot conquer the past, so they continually try to relive it by replenishing it with new memories as they travel once again across the country.

Time, throughout the novel, seems to not exist, for the most part, within the world that Sal and Dean share. This lifestyle was originally introduced by Dean to Sal since Dean convinced Sal to take his first steps towards traveling along this never-ending trip which includes going back and forth across the country. Though, in reality, these trips do take time and take up huge sections of Sal’s life, this does not prevent Sal from retaking these trips as if to escape from the boring aspects of life. Dean, throughout the novel, revisits Sal and convinces him each time to take some trip cross-country with him. Sal, as usual, agrees to take these trips as if he were addicted to doing so. In retrospect however, Sal takes these trips so he may forget the past and replace it with new memories from this trip. Since Sal needs to do this over and over again, he continuously does so with the help of Dean, his soul mate who accompanies Sal on most of these journeys and who, like Sal, suffers from the same addiction of replenishing memories with new ones. This addiction that both characters share seems to play along with this reoccurring theme of “madness” and how it correlates with those who move the fastest. “In Oakland I had a beer among the bums of a saloon with a wagon wheel in front of it, and I was on the road again. I walked clear across Oakland to get on the Fresno road. Two rides took me to Bakersfield, four hundred miles south. The first was the mad one, with a burly blond kid in a souped- up rod. "See that toe?" he said as he gunned the heap to eighty and passed everybody on the road. "Look at it." It was swathed in bandages. "I just had it amputated this morning. The bastards wanted me to stay in the hospital. I packed my bag and left. What’s a toe?" Yes, indeed, I said to myself, look out now, and I hung on. You never saw a driving fool like that. He made Tracy in no time.” (I.12.2 Kerouac) In this passage, it is obvious that Sal understands the madness that lives within the racing of time but fails to do anything about it. With this information, we can assume that Sal is either to afraid to take on the madness or that he is so consumed with the addiction that he is unfit to fight against the power that has now driven him mad which originated within Dean and causes him to feel that it is necessary for him to replenish his mind with new memories.  

Since it now has been proven that there exists some form of madness within Dean and Sal, “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 like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars”, we can move onto the idea that there seems to be a desperate attempt by both to appease this sickness that gnaws at them. The solution, though not permanent, is their constant push to moving forward. Though, we can recognize that it does not get rid of the illness entirely it seems to be the temporary antidote for these two characters:  

“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going 'till we get there.'
'Where we going, man?'
'I don't know but we gotta go.” (Kerouac)

The road is there escape from life. As all humans do, we age and fall victim to the idea of “responsibility”.  However, there are those who are afraid of falling in line and accepting their fate as normal adults and try anything to leave this notion of normality behind. Also, because these kinds of people are a minority of society, the loneliness causes them to go insane since they have very few others to speak with about their thoughts. Such people include Sal and Dean who were fortunate enough to find each other and were able to find the mystical power of healing which lies within the road. That is why both of these characters are so attracted to the road; it allows them to escape the responsibilities that tie them down to a life of boredom and inaction. Also, with the increasing number of responsibilities, the amount held by an individual can help determine how old that individual is. The more chores, the older the person is. Therefore, as rational human beings, Sal and Dean wish to remain young as long as possible and, on the road, they can remain as young as they wish since time has no meaning while they are traveling back and forth across the nation. “And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotuslands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I could hear an indescribable seething roar which wasn't in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds. I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it. I realized it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of the wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein; like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon and it makes you shudder; my feet tingled. I thought I was going to die the very next moment. But I didn't die...” (Kerouac).

 Since we understand the notion that Sal and Dean are attempting to escape life, we begin to analyze what is it about life that seems to be so unattractive to these two. Evidently, as any human would, Sal and Dean seem to be running from something that must have hurt them in the past. Such a thing could be classified as an event, situation, or problem that they both faced and could not overcome and, in the end, they were probably outdone by the something that was causing them grief and despair. Individually, the reader knows that Sal has faced a nasty divorce which has left him scarred, so scarred that he was too afraid to ever settle down again due to his fear of heart break. On the topic of Dean’s past, it is not as clear as to what causes Dean to hate the idea of settling down as much as Sal but there are several clues that help shed some light for the reader. It is not as obvious for the reader however to piece together the reasons as to why Dean would be terrified at settling down in one spot. There are several clues though, that help identify the problem that Dean sees with relating to time during a journey; Dean has his own philosophy behind the concept of time: “They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there — and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see. But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace until they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flits by them and they know it and that too worries them no end.” When one worries about time during their pilgrimage, they seem to forget what really matters which is for them to enjoy the trip itself and not stress themselves out about the tiniest things. However, if you already know that your pilgrimage is to come to an end, then you must build a schedule around that time interval in order to do everything you want to do within those limits. However, if you continue to run along this road without thinking of ending, then you can forget about the stressful factors that come with time and you can do everything that you wanted to do without feeling the pain of worry.  

At the end of our analysis of the madness that lies within the minds of our two main characters, we realize that what Sal and Dean see in the road is not as crazy as we originally thought it to be. At first, it seemed that the road was only a means to escape responsibility and to free oneself from ever having to take charge of one’s own destiny. However, now it is clearer that the road is a means to bypass the rules of time and allow for a more livable lifestyle; a life without fear of ever running out time to do the things one always wished to do. Since, we understand that there is some merit in the lifestyle Sal and Dean have decided to worship, it is acceptable for us to recognize this philosophy as an acceptable way of improving the lives of others who seemed to be too preoccupied with scheduling out one’s own life to fit the narrow restrains that come with the concept of time. “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo."So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” This quote by J.R.R. Tolkien in his novel The Fellowship of the Ring provides clearer insight on what Kerouac is trying to tell the reader with the idea of the road when introduced to Sal and Dean; the idea of life is not to wish for something specific to happen to you but, to make what you wish to happen to you a reality by forgetting about the conventional limitations that come with time and continue searching on the road for the thing you crave most without worrying of what you will actually find.

Work Cited

-        "On the Road." - Wikiquote. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 May 2014. <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Road>.

-        "On the Road Quotes." by Jack Kerouac. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 May 2014. <http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1701188-on-the-road>.

-        Shmoop Editorial Team. "On the Road Quotes." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 4 May 2014. <http://www.shmoop.com/on-the-road/quotes.html>.