A Study Of On The Road From The Perspective Of Carnivalization

On the Road, the representative work of Jack Kerouac and the "Bible of the Beat Generation," recorded the unruly and uninhibited life of the Beats. This kind of carnival life reveals their subversion of the repressive society after World War II and their pursuit of spiritual freedom. Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin developed the theory of carnivalization after an in-depth study of the medieval carnival festival. The carnival embodies common people’s wisdom and subverts any form of authority. This thesis tries to interpret On the Road from the perspective of Bakhtinian theory of carnivalization, analyzing how this novel reflects the carnivalistic spirit of the Beat Generation from the extrinsic features to the intrinsic essence.Chapter One discusses the theory of this thesis-Bakhtinian carnivalization, especially the concept and method concerning textual analysis and interpretation. It points out in general that there is a fundamental relation between the carnivalistic spirit of the Beat Generation and the carnivalistic features of On the Road.Chapter Two analyzes the carnivalistic features of On the Road from the aspects of carnivalistic figures, carnivalistic rituals, and carnivalistic spontaneous writing. In the aspect of carnivalistic figures, this thesis mainly analyzes Dean Moriarty, who has the double identity of devil and angel. He and Marylou form a pair of similar "paired images." They can be regarded as "the king of the carnival" and "the queen of the carnival." In the aspect of carnivalistic rituals, this thesis mainly analyzes the crowning and decrowning of "the king of the carnival"-Dean Moriarty. The last section of this chapter analyzes the writing style of On the Road and reveals that the novel’s spontaneous writing style is essentially the linguistic expression of the carnivalistic spirit of the Beats.Chapter Three is devoted to an illumination of the carnivalistic spirit of subversion permeating the novel. On the Road depicts some adventures of a group of crazy young men and women. They live a frantic life of excessive-drinking, furious driving, taking drugs, stealing cars, sexual indulgence, intemperance, and so on. It is by virtue of this kind of crazy lifestyle that they subvert traditional American life and its ideology.Based on the above analysis, this thesis concludes that On the Road is a highly carnivalized novel and the carnivalistic spirit of the Beat Generation reflects their noble pursuit of freedom and beautiful wish for a better world.