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On the Road

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On the Road
The main theme of the book and its common thread is the journey, seen as an element that breaks the monotony of life and brings the individual to deal with ever new realities, always looking for a new form of existence that could avert the danger of "boredom ".
The journey takes on the function of true teacher of life for all the characters. It is not only meant as the material form of physical movement but also as a "virtual" journey through the use of drugs and abandonment in pleasures. All this, however, is not presented as a process of decay, but as a quest for a primitive instinct of human creativity and innocence now lost and suppressed by mod-ern conformism.
The journey told in the book, however, is not just a figment of the writer: On the road, in fact, col-lects real travel experiences that the writer has made in over seven years with his friend and teacher of life Neil Cassidy (Dean Moriarty in the book).
The novel, in fact, was written on a “scroll” by the writer within three weeks revising its travel notes, under the effect of Benzedrine. The trip, however, is not the only theme in the book. The other themes, in fact, are: the promotion of art in all its forms as a tool to uncover the truth, the search of love and the importance of friendship. As frame the entire novel, then, there is the per-ennial tension between the big cities and small towns, between life without brakes and inhibitions and tranquility of the family, between traveling and staying.
All this points out that total refusal of the values of the bourgeois mass society, for a total embrace of life right "on the road". Sal and Dean with their car, their wandering and hitchhiking through the U.S., their live "hand to mouth", strongly break all the ideals of quiet, still and programmed life.

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