Subversion And Reconstruction: A Deconstuctive Interpretation Of On The Road

Jack Kerouac is generally known as the Beat Writer of the1950s in America,and he holds the position of “the King of the Beats”. On the Road is Kerouac’s mostdistinguished and influential novel. Since its publication, it had led a new trend ofliterary school, Beat Generation, making it canon of the fifties. In1998, the ModernLibrary ranked it55th on its list of100best English-language novels of the20thcentury. It was chosen by Time magazine as one of the100best English-languagenovels from1923to2005. So a lot of research has been done on this novel. Thisthesis, based on all the research products available on the novel, attempts to analyze itfrom a different perspective—Deconstruction, hoping to shed new light on theinterpretation of the novel as well as the writer.The thesis, mainly based on Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction theory, also withsome enlightenment from the deconstruction of the Yale School, tries to make ananalysis of the binary oppositions in the novel first, which include American east vs.west, white vs. non-white, men vs. women, Sal vs. Dean, and traditional writing vs.spontaneous writing, and then the indeterminacy of the ultimate truth throughDifférance of deconstruction. Through the analysis, the thesis tries to show JackKerouac’s philosophical view of life—a new relationship should be establishedbetween those binary oppositions on the one hand, and on the other hand man mustcontinue his quest for the meaning of life through subversion and reconstruction ofthe reality in order to transcend the so-called truth and demonstrate the significance ofhuman existence at the deep level.