An Existentialist Analysis Of On The Road

On the Road, the most famous of Jack Kerouac’s works, is not only the soul of the Beat movement and literature, but one of the most important novels of the century. The narrator Sal and his friends travel across America several times. The travel expresses they are exploring the free spirit and reflects the beat generation is pursuing the purpose of achieving self transcendence.They have been moved from every place and live in a vagrant life. It points out the more positive direction for the absurd world and declares a free and real new life. Their life style influences American people deeply in a lasting time.This thesis analyzes On the Road in an existentialism way with those Sartre’s and Heidegger’s existentialist theories:Existence comes before essence, freedom and responsibility and world is absurd. Besides the introduction to Jack Kerouac and existentialism, there are three chapters in this thesis---the absurdity in On the Road, running heroes in On the Road, The Meaning of On the Road---Taking Responsibility.Chapter One introduced the research studies of Jack Kerouac and his works and the purpose of the analysis from the view points of existentialism. Chapter Two introduced Sartre’s and Heidegger’s existentialist theories. They are Existence Comes before Essence, Freedom and Responsibility, Besorgen and Fursorgen. Chapter Three analyzes the response of characters to the absurd world describing the absurdity they feel, which embodies the angst to world and the angst to the death. Anguish is the starting point of their escaping from the absurd world. In this part, the thesis analyzes the heroes’road of free choice with Sartre’s view points. Dean is escaping from the absurd world through the crazy sex behaviors and finally find his ego. Sal is seeking his identity, transcendence and self salvation. The protagonists in this novel take their responsibilities to achieve self realization. They influence the world with the resistance and attitude of the beat generation by way of taking responsibilities.According to the above mentioned this thesis concludes that the protagonists in On the Road realize the absurdity of the world, then escape from ego and the world and find the real existence by taking responsibilities at last.