Hit the Road, Jack

Road trips are fun!When reading On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, I am getting the simultaneously overwhelming and sorry feeling of wanting to just get into a car and drive just for the purpose of burning gas, but then likewise not being able to because I’m stuck here in NYC (and driving is probably the last thing I want to do in this environment). But that only goes to show you, if the book makes a New Yorker long for the highway, what must have been its effects on the audience at the time when the book came out? I think this novel probably fueled (no pun intended) the engine (I had to carry the metaphor) for road trips. With Sal and Dean always hitchhiking and living “IT”, the allure of the road, snacks and friends must have really increased. Unlike “Daisy Miller”, or “The Sun Also Rises”, this novel has much more of an American feeling, more of a domestic and relatable feeling, because of its direct connection to the American way of life—the automobile. Sal and company didn’t feel to me so much like travelers as they were adventurers out for a, somewhat irresponsible, good time. Perhaps this is because their trip was the less exotic Route 66-type trial and they were still in America. Not even the fact that they went back and forth so out really has much to do with it in my opinion. Sal wasn’t in search of a new home, I don’t think, just in search of a goodtime. I also don’t feel like he really learned from his environments, for example, he disliked Frisco so much the first time, but only returned to it some time later with the same shiny hope for fun. Maybe that was the allure of the West.
That brings up another difference in travel between this book than the ones we read previous. More specifically than the manner in which they traveled, was the fact that “On the Road” was more about THE travel, the actual trip in itself: the long hours on the road. Like the appeal of the West, the crew hit the road to try to find that something, as Sal’s dream was trying to grasp, and this book and that idea is probably what has given road trips and the “pioneering-into-the-unknown” concept its appeal over all these years.