On the Road

by

Jack Kerouac

On the Road: Imagery 12 key examples

Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Part 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Country Eyes:

In the first chapter of Part One, Sal meets Dean and his wife, Marylou, whom he describes with imagery and similes:

Marylou was a pretty blonde with immense ringlets of hair like a sea of golden tresses; she sat there on the edge of the couch with her hands hanging in her lap and her smoky blue country eyes fixed in a wide stare because she was in an evil gray New York pad that she'd heard about back West, and waiting like a longbodied emaciated Modigliani surrealist woman in a serious room.

Kerouac first describes Marylou's hair with a simile: it is "like a sea." Golden tresses are literally descriptive of her hair (a "tress" is a lock or ringlet of hair), but the sea comparison is metaphorical. He goes on to use imagery to help the reader imagine her blank stare, which Sal attributes to her awareness of the "evil gray New York pad" that she's in. Perhaps Marylou is doubting her marriage and the place it has landed her in. "Smoky blue" suggests her eyes have a gray tint to them.

Kerouac often uses words poetically—that is to say, he picks nouns, adjectives, and verbs that don't make sense literally, but do serve a poetic function and concisely give the reader information about the scene. Marylou's "country eyes" are a good example. What would make eyes "country"? A literal interpretation doesn't make sense, but a figurative one might suggest that, because Marylou is from the country, her eyes are not accustomed to sights like New York City. 

Finally, Sal uses a simile to compare Marylou to a "longbodied emaciated Modigliani surrealist woman." This is an allusion to Amedeo Modigliani, a modernist painter with connections to Cubists and Pablo Picasso. 

Part 1, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—An Arrow:

In Part 1, Chapter 4, Sal describes hitchhiking to Denver on a truck driven by two young, cheerful farmers. His use of imagery makes the road life more vivid for the reader and establishes the carefree mood that characterizes the best moments of his journeys. He also uses a simile to describe his elation.

The road changed too: humpy in the middle, with soft shoulders and a ditch on both sides about four feet deep, so the truck bounced and teetered from one side of the road to the other [...] How that truck disposed of the Nebraska nub—the nub that sticks out over Colorado! [...] The great blazing stars came out, the far-receding sand hills got dim. I felt like an arrow that could shoot out all the way.

Sal's meticulous description of the road serves to transport the reader to the truck. A reader may not only see the humpy, worn-down road, but also feel its impact on the movement of the truck. Then Sal takes a bird's-eye view of his travels: as if he is looking at a map, he describes the truck moving over the "Nebraska nub." He returns to a terrestrial viewpoint and uses a simile that indicates his excitement at traveling. He is "an arrow that could shoot out all the way"—something that has the potential to move quickly. Notice that he says "could," rather than saying he is an "arrow that has shot out all the way." That choice of verb tense emphasizes that his journey is only just beginning. 

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Part 1, Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Denver to Frisco:

In Part 1, Chapter 11, Sal describes his journey to San Francisco with a stream of consciousness style that emphasizes the speed of his travel and the associations he has with the American cities he sees. His imagery illustrates more about the time of day and weather in the places he drives through than any specific characteristics of the cities themselves.

The bus trip from Denver to Frisco was uneventful except that my whole soul leaped to it the nearer we got to Frisco. Cheyenne again, in the afternoon this time, and then west over the range; crossing the Divide at midnight in Creston, arriving at Salt Lake City at dawn—a city of sprinklers, the least likely place for Dean to have been born; then out to Nevada in the hot sun, Reno by nightfall, its twinkling Chinese streets; then up to Sierra Nevada, pines, stars, mountain lodges signifying Friso romances [...]

First, Sal's personified soul "leaps" to his destination. It's not clear whether he truly seeks what is in San Francisco or is simply driven by the same need to travel that propels the entire novel. Kerouac uses an impressionistic, stream of consciousness style to portray Sal's journey from Denver to the West Coast. Sal lists the places he passes through, sometimes with very brief imagery, such as when he calls Salt Lake City "a city of sprinklers," or characterizes Reno with "twinkling Chinese streets." These lists give the reader only glimpses into the sights of each city. The stream of consciousness writing here mimics Sal's travels: just as Sal only gets a few impressions of each place he goes through, the reader only has a few words with which to understand these landmarks.

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Explanation and Analysis—My American Continent:

When Sal climbs a mountain in San Francisco, toward the end of Chapter 11 of Part 1, he describes what he sees with personification, imagery, and metaphorical language.

And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhere far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded—at least that's what I thought then.

Phrases such as "raw bulge and bulk of my American continent" are excellent examples of Kerouac's style. This description is part literal, part metaphorical: America does have a lot of literal bulk, and it does bulge out toward the sea from Sal's vantage point, but the "raw" adjective can only be metaphorical. Reasonable readers may come to their own conclusions as to what "raw" may mean in this sentence. That combination of literal and metaphorical works to create an image in the reader's mind of the eagle's eye view Sal has as he looks over mountains, plains, and coasts. It's not likely Sal can see over the entirety of the continent, but his travels allow him to imagine the scope of the country. 

The personified state of New York tosses a brown haze over the horizon that Sal imagines he can see. Sal contrasts this with California, and with a simile he calls California "white like washlines." It's not that lines used for drying clothes are generally white, but instead that white sheets and clothes are often hung up on clotheslines. Sal's pale imagery for California might be a reference to the fog there, and it might also reflect his feeling that there isn't anything on the West Coast for him—at least, not yet.

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Part 2, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Old Bull Lee:

In Chapter 6 of Part 2, Sal travels to New Orleans with Dean and Ed Dunkel to see his old friend, Bull Lee. Sal describes Bull with a metaphor, and he also relays a literary allusion Bull makes:

Bull called [his son, Ray] "the Little Beast," after W. C. Fields. Bull came driving into the yard and unrolled himself from the car bone by bone, and came over wearily, wearing glasses, felt hat, shabby suit, long, lean, strange, and laconic, saying, "Why, Sal, you finally got here; let's go in the house and have a drink."

Once again, Kerouac alludes to the comedian W. C. Fields, although here he places the allusion into Bull's mouth. The character of Bull Lee is based on the Beat writer William Burroughs, and Bull Lee's family in On the Road are based on Burroughs's actual family, although it's not clear whether Burroughs called his son "the Little Beast." Regardless, the allusion serves to establish a point of commonality between Bull and Sal: they both have a thorough understanding of American culture of all kinds. 

Kerouac's description of Bull employs both metaphor and imagery. He metaphorically writes that Bull "[unrolls] himself from the car bone by bone," which suggests that Bull is skinny and slow-moving, just as Burroughs was in real life. Kerouac also creates a thorough image of Bull that includes what he wears and how he moves. Kerouac is a master of characterization through imagery and dialogue, and this moment is no exception. 

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Part 2, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—The Orgone Accumulator:

While visiting Old Bull Lee in Part 2, Chapter 7, Sal describes Bull's "orgone accumulator," which is intended to help the human body absorb "atmospheric atoms of the life principle." Kerouac uses visual imagery to describe the strange invention.

The orgone accumulator is an ordinary box big enough for a man to sit inside on a chair [...] Old Bull thought his orgone accumulator would be improved if the wood he used was as organic as possible, so he tied bushy bayou leaves and twigs to his mystical outhouse. It stood there in the hot, flat yard, an exfoliate machine clustered and bedecked with maniacal contrivances. 

The orgone accumulator is a real invention inspired by the pseudoscientific work of Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian doctor and disciple of Sigmund Freud. Reich thought orgones functioned as a life force that penetrated the entire universe, and followers of alternative medicine adopted his ideas during the mid- and late 20th century. Among those followers was William Burroughs, the writer on whom Old Bull Lee is based. Burroughs did in fact build an orgone accumulator; later in life, he would become interested in other alternative psychotherapies and medicines, such as Scientology. As usual, Sal's friends dabble in all kinds of countercultural practices and beliefs.

Kerouac describes the unique orgone accumulator with imagery. It is, as he says, an "ordinary box," but Bull Lee has adorned his with branches in the hope that he can improve its functioning. When Sal metaphorically calls the orgone accumulator a "mystical outhouse," he is both being humorous and helping the reader imagine this unique contraption, which we can say with certainty no reader will ever see in real life. The use of the adjective "exfoliate" here is quite unusual. Readers may be more accustomed to seeing "exfoliate" used as a verb, perhaps on soap bottles. Kerouac instead means that the orgone accumulator is composed of things gathered (ex-) from nearby foliage (-foliate). 

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Part 3, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Jazz:

In Chapter 4 of Part 3, Sal and Dean go to a jazz club. Kerouac's descriptions of jazz music are remarkably inventive, and this one is no exception. He uses similes and imagery to help the reader imagine the noise and energy of the crowd.

His tone was clear as a bell, high, pure, and blew straight in our faces from two feet away. Dean stood in front of him, oblivious to everything else in the world, with his head bowed, his hands socking in together, his whole body jumping on his heels and the sweat, always the sweat, pouring and splashing down his tormented collar to lie actually in a pool at his feet.

A simile compares the tone of the horn with a bell. Dean stands almost reverently as he listens, his body moving. In fact, Dean sweats so much that his collar is metaphorically "tormented"! Sal says Dean's sweat is "pouring and splashing"—readers would usually take this as metaphorical language, and that's not an incorrect way to read it here, but Sal's insistence that the sweat "actually" forms a "pool at his feet" casts some doubt on whether this deluge of sweat is metaphorical or literal. Once again, Kerouac's style mixes the figurative and the actual to heighten moments of altered consciousness and high energy. 

A chapter later, Dean reflects on the jazz music the men heard the night before. Dean's dialogue is often obscure yet poetic, and isolating the specific literary devices that Kerouac employs here can be hard. But it's certain that metaphorical language and imagery are both a part of Dean's speech.

"Ah well"—Dean laughed—"now you're asking me impon-der-ables—ahem! Here's a guy and everybody's there, right? Up to him to put down what's on everybody's mind. He starts the first chorus, then lines up his ideas, people, yeah, yeah, but get it, and then he rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it. All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it—everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries it. 

There's a rhythm to Dean's speech in the same way that music has a rhythm, and his idiosyncratic dialogue is highly stylized, even when the ideas or claims are hard to follow. Dean claims that a jazz musician needs to "put down" (or express) "what's on everybody's mind." He metaphorically says that the musician must begin by "[lining] up his ideas"—perhaps introducing musical themes he'll return to—but then "rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it." This metaphorical language demonstrates how high-stakes Dean believes jazz can be. The musician metaphorically "picks it up and carries it." Dean seems to use "it" here in a colloquial sense, to refer to an unnamable essence or mood that the musician provokes with his ex tempore playing.

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Part 3, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Jazz:

In Chapter 4 of Part 3, Sal and Dean go to a jazz club. Kerouac's descriptions of jazz music are remarkably inventive, and this one is no exception. He uses similes and imagery to help the reader imagine the noise and energy of the crowd.

His tone was clear as a bell, high, pure, and blew straight in our faces from two feet away. Dean stood in front of him, oblivious to everything else in the world, with his head bowed, his hands socking in together, his whole body jumping on his heels and the sweat, always the sweat, pouring and splashing down his tormented collar to lie actually in a pool at his feet.

A simile compares the tone of the horn with a bell. Dean stands almost reverently as he listens, his body moving. In fact, Dean sweats so much that his collar is metaphorically "tormented"! Sal says Dean's sweat is "pouring and splashing"—readers would usually take this as metaphorical language, and that's not an incorrect way to read it here, but Sal's insistence that the sweat "actually" forms a "pool at his feet" casts some doubt on whether this deluge of sweat is metaphorical or literal. Once again, Kerouac's style mixes the figurative and the actual to heighten moments of altered consciousness and high energy. 

A chapter later, Dean reflects on the jazz music the men heard the night before. Dean's dialogue is often obscure yet poetic, and isolating the specific literary devices that Kerouac employs here can be hard. But it's certain that metaphorical language and imagery are both a part of Dean's speech.

"Ah well"—Dean laughed—"now you're asking me impon-der-ables—ahem! Here's a guy and everybody's there, right? Up to him to put down what's on everybody's mind. He starts the first chorus, then lines up his ideas, people, yeah, yeah, but get it, and then he rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it. All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it—everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries it. 

There's a rhythm to Dean's speech in the same way that music has a rhythm, and his idiosyncratic dialogue is highly stylized, even when the ideas or claims are hard to follow. Dean claims that a jazz musician needs to "put down" (or express) "what's on everybody's mind." He metaphorically says that the musician must begin by "[lining] up his ideas"—perhaps introducing musical themes he'll return to—but then "rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it." This metaphorical language demonstrates how high-stakes Dean believes jazz can be. The musician metaphorically "picks it up and carries it." Dean seems to use "it" here in a colloquial sense, to refer to an unnamable essence or mood that the musician provokes with his ex tempore playing.

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Part 4, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Long Red Dusk:

In Chapter 1 of Part 4, Dean shows Sal a picture of Camille, then takes out more photos. These pictures send Sal into a reverie about the way people in the future will interpret the photos of his present. With metaphors and personification, Sal describes his reflections, first on the photographs, then upon Dean's departure.

Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, or actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. [...] Dean walked off into the long red dusk. Locomotives smoked and reeled above him. His shadow followed him, it aped his walk and thoughts and very being.

Sal metaphorically says his children will imagine him traveling "on the sidewalks of life," a slow and responsible manner of transportation that couldn't be further from how he actually lived. He claims his life is actually a metaphorical "riot," and then calls it a "senseless nightmare road," upon which a traveler goes much faster than on a sidewalk. This is yet another instance in which the road is not only a literal centerpiece of the novel, but also a symbol of the Beat way of life—fast, dangerous, and exciting.

Dean's departure is described with imagery: first of the "long red dusk" which produces a personified shadow that copies Dean's movements, then of trains. The locomotives cannot literally float above Dean, but perhaps this image is meant to convey that trains rush past with the same sort of senseless speed that Dean exhibits throughout the novel. Dean's personified shadow "[apes] his walks and thoughts and very being"—in other words, it copies him. This copy of Dean, through photographs, shadows, and writing, is all Sal will have left when Dean leaves.

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Part 4, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—The Moon:

In Chapter 4 of Part 4, Sal describes another road trip with Dean and Stan. The three men are headed to Mexico, which means they must drive through Texas. Sal describes the sights of their drive with imagery and personification. 

Across the immense plain of night lay the first Texas town, Dallhart, which I'd crossed in 1947. It lay glimmering on the dark floor of the earth, fifty miles away. The land by moonlight was all mesquite and wastes. On the horizon was the moon. She fattened, she grew huge and rusty, she mellowed and rolled, till the morning star contended and dews began to blow in our windows—and still we rolled.

The phrase "plain of night" is a metaphorical combination of two sights Sal sees as he comes into Dallhart: the nighttime sky and the flat, dark landscape of Texas. Like a star turned upside down, the town "lay glimmering." Sal goes on to describe the night sky by personifying both the moon and the morning star. He says the moon "fattened" and became larger. He also describes the moon's color changes throughout the night with imagery: first it's rusty, and then it's mellow, which some readers might understand as suggesting a softer color. The moon rolls down the sky, and as dawn comes nearer the "morning star contended," a second personification which suggests the moon and the brightest star are competing for spots in the sky. 

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Part 4, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Monterrey:

Dean, Sal, and Stan keep driving through Mexico. In Chapter 5 of Part 4, they reach Monterrey. Sal describes this leg of the journey with imagery and a simile.

We met nobody on this high road. It wound among the clouds and took us to the great plateau on top. Across this plateau the big manufacturing town of Monterrey sent smoke to the blue skies with their enormous Gulf clouds written across the bowl of day like fleece. 

The "high road" is usually an English language metaphor to describe taking the morally superior path, but here Sal means it literally: their car is climbing up a slope to the top of a plateau, or the flat surface atop an elevated area. Sal describes their drive with imagery. This road goes up along a mountain that passes through clouds and mist, then takes the travelers into smoky Monterrey. An excellently descriptive simile compares the factories' smoke to fleece, which goes across the metaphorical "bowl of day" like writing. This sentence combines multiple literary devices that suggest different images, but a reader taking the entire sentence together might imagine the frosted and patterned glass of a decorative bowl, turned upside down to form the sky.

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Part 4, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Shepherds:

In Chapter 6 of Part 4, Sal drives through Mexico as his friends sleep. He sees shepherds and describes them with imagery and a biblical allusion:

The shepherds appeared, dressed as in first times, in long flowing robes, the women carrying golden bundles of flax, the men staves. Under great trees on the shimmering desert the shepherds sat and convened, and the sheep moiled in the sun and raised dust beyond. "Man, man," I yelled to Dean, "wake up and see the shepherds, wake up and see the golden world that Jesus came from, with your own eyes you can tell!"

Recall that On the Road is, according to Kerouac, about a spiritual quest for meaning as much as it is a series of physical journeys. Fittingly, in one of the final chapters of the novel Sal sees a biblical scene: shepherds. Shepherds have a crucial place in the Bible's New Testament, both as actual people (such as when shepherds visit the newborn Jesus) and as a symbol of Jesus's guidance of humankind. Accordingly, Sal sees these Mexican shepherds working in rustic, pre-industrial conditions, and he feels as if they are a part of the "golden world that Jesus came from," a world of poverty and labor. 

Kerouac takes great care to describe this biblical scene with imagery. The shepherds are dressed in "long flowing robes" and carry crops and staves. Because of the heat, the desert is "shimmering," and the sheep kick up dust. The passage is full of light: twice Kerouac uses the word "golden," and both the sunshine and the heat are mentioned.

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Part 5, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Go Moan for Man:

In the only chapter of Part 5, the final part of the novel, Sal returns to the United States from Mexico. In Texas, he has a mysterious encounter, which he describes with imagery:

[...] I was standing on the hot road underneath an arc-lamp with the summer moths smashing into it when I heard the sound of footsteps from the darkness beyond, and lo, a tall old man with flowing white hair came clomping by with a pack on his back, and when he saw me as he passed, he said, "Go moan for man," and clomped on back to his dark. Did this mean I should at last go on my pilgrimage on foot on the dark roads around America?

Sal describes first the summer night, then the sound of the stranger approaching him. The stranger himself is like a biblical figure, a saint, or a hobo: old and long-haired with only a backpack. His advice to Sal is suitably obscure, and he then disappears into the darkness he came from. Even Sal doesn't know what "Go moan for man" means, but interprets it as a command to continue traveling America, this time on foot. Is this mysterious figure another iteration of the Shrouded Traveler that pushed Dean and Sal onward in their dreams?

This moment isn't an allusion to anything specific, but note the biblical imagery and even word choice that Kerouac employs here. The figure of the ascetic saint, as well as verbiage such as "lo" and "pilgrimage," remind the reader that Sal's journeys are meant to be for his spiritual fulfillment. The stranger's advice suggests that Sal must suffer for other people—"moan for man"—like a martyr or a Jesus figure. 

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