But No Matter the Road Is Life”, Discuss the Role of the Road in “on the Roads

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But no matter the road is life”, Discuss the Role of the Road in “On The Road“ In Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road (1957), the reader follows the main protagonists, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, on a journey of self discovery, brought to them through the freedom and visceral nature of life on the road; a life which has no boundaries and knows no limits. “No matter the road is life” summarises the enrapturing nature of the road; Sal and Dean are pulled in its direction, much like the pull of a magnetic force. However it is the word “life” which must be analysed most carefully; for several of the characters within On the Road, the road has a significance, yet for each of them it is significant in a different way. This allows each of the characters to access it on different levels, thus causing the road to take on the role of life because of its symbolic nature which is relevant to all who have experienced it. Without the road – which allows Sal and Dean to continue their hedonistic pursuit of “girls, visions, everything” – the pair become discontent and agitated; Sal reaches temporary insanity and Dean becomes so dysfunctional that he experiences loss of coherent speech. The road offers Sal and Dean an experience which became known as the Beat Generation, a life full of raw sexual encounters, gritty worldly experiences and portal into an underworld. In Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), the road’s main role is to stand as a physical symbol of freedom and spontaneity for the main characters Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, personified versions of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, (iconic figures during America’s Beat Generation). However the road also has a more abstract and spiritual symbolic purpose in forming the veins for the raw and sexualised body of America, which provide Dean and Sal with a journey in which to follow in order to discover aBut no
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