Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road, is about the journey of a young college-age man across the country in search of something more from his life in post-war America. The book revolves around a young man named Sal Paradise, and the whole story is told from his perspective. The rambling writing, while hard to understand sometimes, offers a detailed record of his pursuit and the ensuing antics. The story starts in 1947 where Sal meets a man named Dean Moriarty, a lively and animated man who was a “sideburned hero of the snowy West” (Kerouac 2). It was Dean who prompted Sal’s adventurous travels west. Along the way, Dean and Sal befriend Carlo Marx, an energetic young poet who shares the same view of wanting something a little more out of life.
Sal’s journeys across the U.S. and to Mexico open his eyes to the good and bad, the up and downs in life. His constant stints on the road with madman Dean sometimes got him in trouble with the law. Other times, the trips allowed Sal to truly find out more about himself, and relate to Dean on a more personal level to share and connect The meaning behind the title On the Road lies in Sal’s innate desire for something more. The road in this novel comes to symbolize freedom and the solution to answer life’s problems. Sal constantly finds a refreshing sense of purity once he hits the open road, especially in the company of Dean, whose spirit was the catalyst for the voyages in the first place. However, once Sal and Dean get to Mexico City, their ideas of humanity become challenged when he realizes not everyone in the world enjoys a sense of togetherness and spirituality. They no longer feel an all- embracing humanity with the people they see, but discomfort and difference among the poor people they run into at the end of their escapades across the U.S.
On the Road features a few main recurring themes throughout this novel. One of them is friendship. Sal's and Dean's friendship throughout the novel reflects the buddy themes found in much classic and pop culture. They are two men sharing travel experiences. Their relationship is a part of the male bonding stereotype. Yet, what they have transcends a typical friendship. Through their adventures and travels, they become comrades and brothers. Dean's madness envelops Sal; Dean can make the mundane extraordinary for Sal. Their deeds and misdeeds bond them together in a way that ordinary friendship rarely does.
In On the Road, however, friendship is also a power that can destroy. Sal eventually sees his relationship with Dean as destructive. During their final journey he laments Dean's coming to take him to Mexico. Dean, and the subculture represented by Sal's Beat friends, come to represent the destruction of the traditional values of American society like family and relationship. This kind of individualist idea is one of the themes of the novel, and Sal can sense that something is being lost by this destruction. During the final journey, Sal realizes that the destructive nature of this kind of friendship can have severe consequences for the people surrounding him and Dean.
This gives way to the theme of freedom in the novel. The road is the most obvious symbol for freedom. For Sal Paradise, Dean Moriarty represents true freedom. Dean's motivations and passions, often foolish and criminal to the rest of the world, represent for Dean the true expression of what it means to be young and what it means to be a natural man. While all of Dean's and Sal's friends consider Dean to be irresponsible and not to be trusted, Sal instead sees Dean's erratic behavior as the proof that Dean thinks and lives on a higher plane than the rest of the world does.
Throughout the novel, Dean's behavior is portrayed sympathetically. Kerouac suggests that Dean's actions are only the result of his quest for a pure life and that he cannot be held responsible for what the rest of the world may or may not view as criminal or irresponsible. Engaging in such behavior is the only way, as Sal and Dean see it, to find the true meaning of life, "It" as they call it, throughout the novel. For Kerouac, the body's natural appetites must take precedence over any legal or social ramification that might come about by indulging in them. Stealing cars, doing drugs, or engaging in sexual relations with underage women are only expressions of the natural instincts of men who seek to live true and natural lives.
The final theme that occurs throughout the novel is coming of age. Traveling has the greatest symbolic significance, through which Sal experiences the ways of life and understanding the “world” (in his case the continental United States) around him. Themes of violence, sex, and drugs surround Sal through his experiences and leads to a greater understanding of himself, both by his own personal experiences and those he witnesses from Dean. In a broader sense, On the Road's major lesson is about the proper way of growing up. Unlike Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye, Sal Paradise is struggling with getting through adolescence and maturity rather than delaying it. This contrasts with Dean Moriarty who symbolically portrays a child, always on the move. Sal's struggle is how to balance these opposing forces. In the end, Sal parts ways with Dean, knowing he can never change.
These exact issues are what define the Beat Generation as a whole, of which Sal Paradise becomes the metaphorical face. On the Road exemplifies how the Beat generation was a multi-leveled and powerful rejection of the traditional American Dream. The fundamental messages of the American Dream are stability and that to be an accomplished person one must own a house in the suburbs. On the Road contradicts this point as the progression of the characters comes through a nomadic and unstable lifestyle. This impulsiveness leads to the rejection of social norms, and therefore the direct rejection of the American Dream. The characters’ outright refusal to live the way that is expected of them is a manifestation of the Beat movement in the purest sense.
In addition to living outside the expectations of society, the characters hold little regard for the law, mocking it with their indifference. Furthermore, the characters have a casual attitude to loyalty in relationships, instead of being faithful to one person they are emotionally and sexually promiscuous and even friendships are considered disposable. Perhaps the most fundamental motivation for the characters actions in this novel is the constant search for instant gratification. Contrary to the traditional values of a well-planned and monotonous life, the members of the Beat generation represented in "On the Road" stand for spontaneity and an urge to satisfy their basic, animalistic desires with no regard for the consequences. As a result of these contradictions to traditional beliefs and values, "On the Road" is a blatant and complex rejection of the American Dream.
To summarize, On the Road is a powerful novel that explores the alternate fulfillment of life opposite of the American Dream in post-WWII America. Through it, Sal experiences what he’s been wanting out of life and gains a better perspective about himself and humanity as a whole. It may not have been the road that Sal was looking for as his answer to “it”, but in fact it was within Dean Moriarty’s spirit the whole time.