Previous
Stream of Consciousness
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Kerouac's most famous novel was based upon his real travels and experiences, and as such, the book often reads like a memoir. The first-person narrator relays his journeys with precision: he states how and where he travelled, who he met along the way, how much he spent and for what, and the things he saw with an authoritative amount of detail. There are a litany of eccentric characters, whose voices Kerouac inhabits with slang and dialect. The novel proceeds mostly chronologically, and the reader sees everything through Sal's point of view.
But far from being the simple recollections of a traveler, On the Road is also stylistically and methodologically experimental. Kerouac often combines words or creates new ones, writes with onomatopoeias (words that imitate the sounds they are meant to represent), and uses highly metaphorical language to describe the landscape and his emotions. Readers of Allen Ginsberg (who is represented in On the Road by the character Carlo Marx) will likely note the connections between his poetics and the prose work of Kerouac: for instance, both men often employ imagery of fire and angels.
The plot moves quickly, and sometimes disturbing or important events pass by with little editorializing from Sal. However, Sal does sometimes provide crucial information for understanding the book and the people featured in it, and the person he is most interested in understanding is Dean. The novel begins and ends with Dean, and while he is not always with Sal, he is perhaps the person with whom Sal spends the most time traveling. Many of the novel's most introspective and emotional segments are about Dean, who was based closely upon Kerouac's friend Neal Cassady.
Dream sequences, reflections, descriptions, and moments of altered consciousness (caused by drugs, illness, alcohol, or sleep) are often moments when Kerouac chooses to take on a more experimental, stream of consciousness writing style, perhaps inspired by the modernist writers of the early 20th century. While Kerouac wrote On the Road within a quick three week period, he wrote from notes, which allowed him to recall detail about his journeys and may have contributed to the straightforward yet impressionistic recounting that characterizes much of the novel. Additionally, Kerouac's original manuscript, written on a long scroll formed with multiple sheets of paper, is not the version covered in this guide. The On the Road that went to print in 1957 was edited for a host of reasons. When Viking Press decided to publish the novel, a copyeditor worked behind the scenes to "fix" punctuation, formatting, and grammar. Kerouac didn't care for some of the changes, especially the plethora of commas added, but was in no position to insist his style was deliberate and necessary to the story.
Related Themes:
