On the Road (Adam Beyer)

On The Road
Jack Kerouac
Penguin Publishing
320 pages

I found this book at home.

The book starts off in 1947, when Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise first meet each other. They become great friends and start to take road trips across the country. Sal always wished to go west so that’s where they head and end up in Denver. Sal is fascinated with Dean because Dean is basically a pimp. He is married three times and has four kids in the three years that the book takes place. The reason why Sal is fascinated with this is because in the beginning Sal is very depressed because he does not have a girl. In the end, he finds love and turns out happy.


I believe the audience for this book is anyone who likes to read realistic books because even though this book is fictional it seems like it could actually have happened.

Jack Kerouac’s writing style is very complex and contains meaningful passages. This greatly helps you understand what the book is about.
“He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him."

a. "Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love.” This passage is a great explanation of why Sal looks up to Dean. Sal is used to boring people and is tired of it. Dean shows him how to lighten up and have fun.
b. "Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.” This quote explains how Sal had never given up on his dream. In the end, it paid off for him when he found love.
c. "A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world." This quote shows how much pain Sal went through in search of a girl to love. It buts him through great stress every time the girl walks away and he can’t do anything about it.

6. I could relate to this book. Reading this book greatly helped me write the song for my presentation. I feel it gave a deeper meaning of the American dream than The Great Gatsby did. It show someone achieve it. The part that really spoke to me was when Sal found love and finally achieved his dream.