All Across These Roads We Go

By Thomas Y.

The book On The Road, by Jack Kerouac, is an adventure novel portraying the adventures of Sal Paradise and his friend Dean Moriarty. On The Road shows writer Sal in a depressed and slump like time, where he meets the reckless Dean. Thinking Dean has an active attribute he is lacking, Sal follows Dean on a three-year journey across the country. On this adventure is plenty of sex, drugs, alcohol, and other potentially dangerous situations. Also along the trip there are several settings, dramas\, characters, and moments of development.

Author Jack Kerouac spent three weeks creating this work, after spending years of unyielding failure. This was only the second novel by Kerouac, and many more works were seen during his lifetime. Other works by Kerouac include The Legend of Duluoz series, Book of Blues, Mexico City Blues, Pomes All Sizes, The Town and the City, and many more. Although making several works, Kerouac died at the age of forty-seven in 1969.

In On The Road, I found a wonderful story about the adventures of the author himself, travelling with his friend Neal Cassady. The characters were based off of real people Kerouac met along his travels, and I loved this as it made the story seem much more realistic. I enjoyed how the story focused more on the constant moving of characters and the characters themselves, rather than a plot to the story. A lack of plot kept this novel unique to anything I've read before.

Also, I liked and disliked the first-person story telling. Seeing how Kerouac was consistent with this was enjoyable, but only being able to witness Sal's point of view, which filtered out some information due to issues with memory, caused some moments to be less clear. Another thing I found a little bothersome was the pace of the novel. With constant moving of the characters and swiftly changing settings, the pace was set rather quickly. This pace was a slight bit too fast for my taste, but some may have different opinions.

On The Road was a great read, and I feel much better learning about youthful people striving for something different than being used to a typical setting and or set of events. I honestly regret putting reading this book off, as I was delighted to read it. If possible, I would recommend that anyone who hasn't read this book does so, it should show to be a splendid experience. You can find On The Road at your local or school library.