Beat Generation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Beat Generation - Essay ExampleThe concluding edition was not create till six years afterwards Kerouac wrote it in one extended paragraph in 1951. In 1957, the Beat poem Howl (by Kerouacs friend Allen Ginsberg) had gained unsavory reputation the newly published On the Road was proficient to ride the wave of attention in the Beats as well as make Kerouac an immediate celebrityOn the Roads cross-continental journeys are about Kerouacs trips, broadly speaking by car and bus and often accompanied by his friend Neal Cassady, the frenetic, charismatic, independent pupil from the West. Cassadys name in the novel is Dean Moriarty. The novel begins with Dean and Sal Paradise (Kerouac) meeting in New York City and progresses through four mostly fast-paced trips, back and forth amid New York and California, up and d receive the Eastern Seaboard, along the Gulf Coast, and downs into Mexico, with notable stopovers in Denver and New Orleans, the latter to come across Old Bull Lee (William 3). The open road, poverty, drugs, alcohol, nullity, hunger, sex, speed, and characters met along the way create intense situations that allow the travelers to observe, react, and consider while becoming more familiar with their own identities.The novels two principal characters are the narrator, Sal, and his companion and hero, Dean Moriarty thinly veiled versions of Kerouac and his friend Neal Cassady. The book unfolds as a loosely committed series of episodes that document the pairs adventures during a drunken and drug-ridden odyssey through the United States. Along the way, they meet and befriend an unforgettable gallery of American types jazz singers, drug addicts, hitchhikers, and drifters. Their journey culminates in a revealing and darkly humorous stay in Mexico (Challi p 10).Much of On the Road is barely hide autobiography, a document attesting to the