CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
JACK KEROUAC'S )\ INNOCENT VISION
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in
English
by Daniel l\1ark ---Scott
June, 19'78 The thesis of Daniel Mark Scott is approved:
California State University~ No:cthridge
June~ 1978 · 1
In a significant number of his novels, Jack Kerouac searches for the simplicity, freedom, and idealism of a. truly innocent life. Robert A. Hipkiss in Jack Kerouac,
Prophet Of The New Romanticism refers to Kerouac's work
(the novels about Lowell, Massachusetts in particular):
"They celebrate a child's vision of innocence that cannot come again but which Kerouac desperately holds onto as the only true vision of purity and goodness in a corrupt 1 world." That statement not only desc-ribes the Lowell novels but serves to illuminate and explain almost every no,jel that Kerouac wrote. Kerouac' s novels chart the voyage of the child/innocent as he searches for spiritual inspiration and transcendence in America. As Kerouac says in The Dharma. Burris: 11 To the children and the innocent it's 2 all the same."
Jack Kerouac treasured simplicity and exhibited a lasting innocent vision of the world. In Visions Of Cody,
Jack Duluoz states:
"I'm writing this book because we're all going to die--In the loneliness of my life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife faraway, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our death, sleeping in me ra'"' bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my heart broke in the general despair, and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream" (yyc, 36 s > . 2
In this passage, Kerouac expresses his vulnerability and anguish, but beyond that, there lies a prevailing hope, a belief in some eternal principle that will see him through.
Since the majority of Kerouac's work is autobiographical, a large number of actual people reappear throughout his novels under different names. They include Allen Ginsberg, t Burroughs, Gary Snyder, his dear friend, Neal Cassady, along with members of his family and other major figures in his life. Kerouac's ever present hope is his reaction to his vision of being a child forced to deal with an uncaring and incomprehensible world. Kerouac sought to prolong a belief in goodness and innocence beyond childhood. There was a coherence to his youth that he would never recover and always sought. The break came when his family left his home town of Lowetl, Massachusetts, and moved to New Haven and Ozone Park. He later expressed his feelings of dislocation in Dr. Sax: "I judged I was being torn from my mother's womb with each step -from Home Lowell into the Unknown . . . a serious lostness that has never replaced itself ... " (DS,lll}. In a dream he recorded, Kerouac noted that he had lost his way and had taken the wrong path during the war. Similarly, John Clellon Holmes-referred to the lack of their gener~ ation's connection to the immediate present as a "broken circuit." 3 Holmes speaks specifically of Kerouac's lost ness: "I never fully understood the hunger gnavling in him 3 then, and didn't realize the extent to which the breakup of his Lowell-home, the chaos of the war years and the death of his father, had left him disrupted, anchorless; a deeply traditional nature thrown out of kilter, and thus enormously sensitive to anything uprooted, bereft, helpless or 4 persevering." Kerouac's geological and psychological displacement as a youth prompted his later travels on the road. For all the virtues of a community (love, a feeling of involvement, purpose, and meaning) Kerouac had to turn to his friends or himself. Hence, he was forced to create his own world in his mind, a world of child-like innocence. In Dr. Sax, his fantasies surrounded his nostalgia for his boyhood in Lowell and progressed to the mythic struggle between good and evil in the end of the novel.· Dr. Sax, Jack's friend and pro tector, explains adult life to him and concludes: "You'll never be as happy as you are in your quiltish innocent book-devouring boyhood immortal night" {DS,203). As a result, the adult world will never match the innocent, blissful vision of childhood. Dr. Sax refers-to evil as only an illusion; he believes that the snake will turn out to be a husk of seminal gray doves. vfuen his potions fail to kill the snake, Sax tells. Jack that nothing works in the end, that the universe does not care what happens to man, and that there is nothing that anyone can do about it. But at tbat moment, a huge, 4 black bird swoops down and takes the snake away and Jack concludes that the universe counteracts its own evil (DS,240-5). Consequently, Jack is ecstatic and exclaims that there is still hope. The hope expressed in Dr. Sax was one that Kerouac carefully guarded his entire life. Dr. Sax romanticizes Kerouac's past; the novel is a charm ing hymn to childhood. Although Sax's struggle with evil strips the mystery. away from him, Jack still believes in the everlasting triumph of good over evil. Kerouac sought to respond to life freely and instinctively as a child would and therefore very early retreated to memories of childhood, the source of man's hopes and fears. In On The Road, Sal Paradise says that the one thing man yearns for "is the sweet remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be replaced though we hate to admit it in. death" (OTR,l24). From birth one is alone in the universe; the child faces the anguish of solitude which terminates in death. In order to deal with the solitude of his life, Kerouac turned to his mother to avoid facing the loneliness that surrounded him. He would always return to her for a home, security, and peace. As a result, Kerouac could preserve his innocent vision only by refusing to enter his father's world. He identified his father with the wage earning struggle that left Leo Kerouac unemployed and spiritually crushed in the thirties. When his father died, 5 Kerouac felt betrayed and terribly alone. George Martin in The Town And The City closely resembles Leo Kerouac. George suffers the inevitable disillusionment of the American Dream. He began life thinking that the whole world was waiting for him, promising endless opportunities. As he reached middle age, he became aware that the American Dream was only a dream that one could possess in youth. The brutal reality of the world inevitably intrudes after childhood. ·In addition, the reality of war disrupts the family and a sense of meaning- lessness overwhelms each of the sons. Peter, Francis, Joe, and George Martin are all deeply disturbed and changed by the war. There was always a difference between what they were expecting and what life was providing for them. Peter co:mments on this disparity: "And yet that children and fathers should have a notion in their souls that there must be a way, an authority, a great knowledge, a vision, a view of life, a proper manner, an order in all the disorder and sadness of the world--that alone must be God in men •.• " (TAC,424). Kerouac believed that the "should be" in men's souls could prevail. That is what Kerouac sought all his life: a way, a knowledge, a purpose, an order, a meaning in the universe. There is a strong emotional intensity in The Town And The City. The interaction between the family members, whether it is brother and brother or father and son, 6 represent the sense of community and familial ties that Kerouac longed for. When Peter and Francis return home for Christmas, they have a conversation that illuminates some of Peter's (Kerouac's) feelings. Peter refuses to agree with Francis about the hopelessness of life. However, Francis tells Peter that God is dead, that man is incapable of expressing love, and that evil will eventually overcome mankind. He rejects the effectiveness of action because .o good can come of life. Moreover, he views existence as a nightmare with the enemy as consciousness. But Peter prizes the consciousness that allows him to fully enjoy and appreciate life. He sees the world as crazy and comic, but he always has faith that things will improve. Accordingly, he feels that life is sweet and that God will take care of him in the end (TAC,l53-8). Peter finally realizes that despite loss, confusion,and grief, existence holds out love, work, and true hope. Kerouac's sympathy for anyone "uprooted, bereft, help less, or persevering" revealed itself in his idealized treatment of children, Negroes, Mexicans, Indians, hoboes, and dope addicts-. He celebrated the simplicity and spontaneous freedom that he believed these people possessed. As Sal Paradise says in On The_ Road: "The best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night . I wished I \vere a Denver J'.1exica.n, or even a poor overworked 7 l Jap, anything but what I was so drearily, a "white man disillusioned .. (OTR,l48). It is an essential life force that attracts him, a "hepness, .. a vitality, a majesty and wonder. Negroes became to Kerouac "the happy, true-hearted, ecstatic Negroes of America" (OTR,l49), or he saw the-Negro as "the essential American out there always finding his solace, his meaning in the felaheen street and not in abstract morality" (LT,39). Kerouac's interest lies in the primitive simplicity of the Negroes. They can be true hearted and ecstatic because they do not participate in the civilized man's world of competition, greed, and war. More over, the Negro is portrayed as not being concerned with the white man's self-destructive society; he will live his life out indulging in simple, pure pleasures. One of these pleasures is jazz, that spontaneous burst of creativity and emotion that comes from the Negro soul. In Kerouac's idealized novel about Negroes, Pic, Pic's brother Slim tells the ten-year-old boy about life: "It's like the man say in the Bible--A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth" (P,35). In that remark, the Negro embodies the essence of beatness, yet Kerouac's Negroes meet each new situation with a carefree, happy, uncomplaining attitude. In The Subterranean~_, when Leo Percepid has an affair with Mardou Fox, a black girl, he sees in her a troubled, pure spirit. Mardou leads a life 8 of patient suffering and expects and anticipates nothing; she merely accepts life. In her acceptance, Kerouac sees the essential woman, affectionate and maternal (SUB,l29). The hobo also becomes sacred to Kerouac because of his "idealistic lope to freedom and the hills of holy silence and holy privacy" (LT,l72-3), a freedom to do whatever he wanted in a world that was being more and more restricted and confined. American mechanized civilization threatened the hobo with extinction; the frontier had vanished, there was nowhere for him to go. Shunning wealth and power, the hobo refuses to enter into the competitive world of adult America (something that Kerouac also feared) . The hobo is another symbol of the primitive who is un acceptable to society. Stripped of any sense of community, he turns to the joy of the simple life and the brotherly company of fellow hoboes. Kerouac concentrates on the adventure and risk of the hobo's life and omits his deprivation, humiliation, and hopelessness. Nevertheless, to Kerouac, the hobo was always the symbol of absolute freedom. The hobo becomes holy and saint-like because of his overwhelming· commitment to his way of life. Living in harmony and at peace with nature, the hobo can relate to the life forces surrounding him. Similarly, Kerouac considered himself a Dharma Bum and a religious wanderer; he felt a kinship with all other wanderers and homeless bums of the world. 9 Kerouac was also fascinated with Mexico, a land that offered another type of unsophisticated freedom. In Lonesome Traveler, Kerouac speaks of crossing the border into Mexico as entering the "Pure Land" (LT,22), and on other occasions he speaks of it as the Promised Land. The primitive surroundings of Mexico appealed to him, allowing him to feel close to the earth, to the beginning of life and time. In On The Road, when Sal and Dean arrive in Mexico, they think of it as a magic, child-like country waiting for them at the end of the road. Sal immediately feels an ecstatic sense of freedom. Once away from the stifling conformity of American civilization, Sal can move, think, and act as he chooses~ Kerouac viewed the Mexican people as gay and uncaring. He discovered a simplicity and exuberance in their lives that he sought in his own. In Sabinal, working with the Negroes and Mexicans in the fields, Sal thinks that he has· found his life's work {QTR,81}. Similarly, Tristessa, in the novel that bears her name, also appealed to Kerouac because of ·the carefree quality of her life, despite its squalor and poverty. He attempts to romanticize her surroundings and her way of life, but Tristessa remains a junkie who suffers from pain and despair. However, Kerouac convinces himself that Tristessa will be taken care of because she is innocent; he refers to her as being holy and assures her that she will go to heaven. 10 Tristessa, Mardou Fox, and Terry from On The Road all appeal to Kerouac as primitive, sexually attractive women because they are all outcasts: one is black, one is Mexican, one is a junkie. He imagines escaping with each one of them to a more primitive existence, where the concerns of the world will not reach him. Tristessa's room in Mexico would have removed him from the world but he does not stay there. Terry and Sal manage to live in a tent together and pick cotton, but it doesn't last. Similarly, Mardou and Leo plan a trip to Mexico that never occurs and their affair ends shortly thereafter. Kerouac saw the outside world as a frightful, lonely place, yet he rejected female companionship and limited his close male friends to a handful. Instead he turned to the world of the self. In Visions Of Cody he says: "My own life, an endless contemplation, is so interesting, I love it so, it is vast, goes everywhere"· (VOC,307). It was necessary to believe in his·own soul, to love his life, his dreams, to love himself. As Seymour Krim in Yo~ And Me puts it: _"The 1'>-...merican society was essentially a launching pad for the endless development of the Self We cared more about trying to enlarge and extend the boundaries of what we were, of demonically sucking all of the country's 5 possibilities into ourselves." Krim goes on to say that his generation's true projects were themselves. Throughout Kerouac' s quest for ·the self, he had an overwhelming 11 capacity for hope that enabled him to survive. In withdrawing from society and active life, Kerouac sought to examine his soul, hoping for an all...;..transcending illumination that would purify him and make him joyful and complete. When he joins Japhy Ryder (Gary Snyder) in The Dharma Bums, Ray Smith (Kerouac) experiences an intense feeling of peace, immediately bringing to mind the happy life of his childhood. Backpacking in the mountains and seeking the purity of nature, Ray feels that everything will be all right forever. He enjoys an expansive freedom that he would not be able to.re-experience in other attempts at self-exile. In his life and his fiction, the escape from family and society could only last so long for Kerouac. Unfortunately, he did not possess the discipline that was required for being completely self-sufficient. In 1954 Kerouac began to study Buddhism and he realized that he wanted to do nothing, only to rest and be kind to others. The belief that the world was an illusion beyond which was nothing but a void comforted him. Furthermore, he was interested in the first of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism: All life is suffering. Using this idea, he attempted to rationalize the pain, suffering, and loneliness of his life. Robert A. Hipkiss provides some insight con cerning Kerouac',s belief that the world was a dream or an illusion: "There is nothing to do in it (the world) except exist, to accept the wonder of the illusion, to be kind to 12 all who are afflicted by it, and to know that death marks 6 the end of it and a return to the perfect void." By approaching life as an illusion, Kerouac was able to justify the absurdity and pointlessness of existence to himself. Whether confronting the world or the void, Kerouac believed in the ultimate goodness and oneness of existence and summed up man's purpose on the earth as the need to experience suffering in preparation to knowing what he called the Golden Eternity. He states in Lonesome Traveler: "For when you realize that God is Everything you know that you've got to love everything no matter how bad it is" (LT,l32). What is required is patience, fortitude, faith, and the desire to practice kindness and sympathy, as opposed to America's spiritually corrupting materialism. Kerouac's desire for knowledge carried him to Buddhism as one way of piecing together the problem of existence. John Clellon Holmes once said of Kerouac: "I saw . . . a man who some- times seemed positively crazed by the upheavals in his own psyche, whose life was painfully \vrenched between the desire to know, for once and all, just who he was, and the equally powerful desire to become immolated in a Reality beyond 7 himsel£." Buddhism became for Kerouac a way of "deconditioning," of changing his expectations, of opening new horizons. It sanc~ified every moment of existence and placed final authority in the individual's insights _and actions. 13 Believing that all distinctions are falsely imagined, Buddhism denied all value judgments, declaring that·every thing was equally holy. Because everything was holy, Kerouac constantly found evidence of divinity and mystery in everyday existence. Hiking in the Sierras with Japhy in The Dharma ~, Ray exclaims: "The roar of the silence was like a wash of diamond waves going through the liquid porches of our ears, enough to soothe a man a thousand years" (DB,57). As Ray is overwhelmed by the magnificence of nature, his belief in a beneficent God at the heart of things solidifies. He is certain that everything will work out for the best. Kerouac's quest for simplicity was tied to his gener- ation's common search for freedom. Since he could not find the freedom that would lead to spiritual satisfaction with in society, he turned to the realm of the self. Writing in the fifties, Ralph Ellison commented on the difficulty of seTf~exploration within the period: "The nature of society 8 is such that we are preven·ted from knowing who we are." In effect, the process of discovering or creating the self became restricted in the fifties because of a pervading sense of fear and repression. The decade was marked by the Cold War, the intimidation of dissent, and the hysteria of anti-Communism. One way to embark on a journey into the genuine self was to join with those who were forced to live 14 authentic lives. Such was Norman Mailer's view of the American Beat hipster, who must prepare himself to "live with death as immediate danger, to divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that un charted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the 9 self." Kerouac - was on a perpetual journey to self discovery, a search for a spiritual vision. John Clellon Holmes said: ·"I caught myself looking at Kerouac . -. . wondering where 1 in God's name that damned vision comes from." ° Kerouac became alienated from the culture that created him. The post war era, in which the Beats were growing up, was haunted by the continual fear of thermonuclear war. Technology and bureaucracy became the twin gods of the new culture.· The generation of the fifties saw the creation of blacklists, the purging of unions, and the jailing of supposed Communists. In the midst of such mind-controlling forces, the Beats experienced an almost unbearable sense of disconnection with a country that was intent on winning the Cold War and maintaining internal security. The Beats reacted against society by acting out their desires, seeking to achieve innocence by purging guilt and shame. The Beats needed to believe in something and wanted to know how to live. They knew that they would have to come to terms with life vlithin themselves, without the sanctions of society. This led to the excesses of their lives: mad- 15 ness, drugs, religious ecstasies, dissipation. "The Beat thing," as Seymour Krim says, "was an inevitable explosion of people with raw primary instincts who simply refused to keep them damned up any longer . They were people involved who had respect for their own experiences and 11 wanted to write from [sic] it." Kerouac and Cassady proceeded to affirm the life that they had in the only way they knew how--by acting as if the extreme was the only real expression of the self. As Holmes says of Kerouac: "Such voracious appetites, such psychic vulnerability, such 12 singleness of·purpose, must ream a man out at the end." That comment describes Kerouac's first conception of the i.vord "beat" (OTR, 161) • Later he saw "beat" as meaning "beatific" (OTR,l61), claiming that the Beats were on a spiritual quest. Though they rushed across the country, their journey was inward. · Kerouac found a tenderness, humility, joy, and love in his generation, a vast human spirit that was being destroyed by the civilizing forces of society. Speaking of "beat," Holmes declares: "More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw . • . A man is beat whenever he goes for broke and wagers the sum of his 13 resources on a single number." Neal Cassady, one of the prominent figures of the Beat Generation, certainly went for broke. Cassady lived the life that Kerouac and Gins berg could only write about. ·He acted as an alter ego and 16 a foil to Kerouac; he lived life continuously on the edge._ He was found on February 4, 1968 in Mexico, naked and dead by the railroad tracks after mixing alcohol with sleeping pills. He was forty-one. Neal and Jack went searching for the innocence and freedom of a lost frontier. They were looking for the moment when all would be revealed, but the insight never carne. In Visions Of Cody, Jack speaks of all the Indians along the road wanting something and says that they wouldn't be on the road if they had it (VOC,380). Their search it self was a celebration of freedom and life. As a result, Deans constant exclamation of "Yes, yes!" (OTR,l63) affirmed the splendor and joy of experience. The mark of Dean's freedom was his infectious laughter, even in despair; it became a kind of life force. Yet when Dean and Sal are on the road, movement sometimes becomes an end in itself, until they merely travel down an endless road, experiencing and assimilating nothing. Moreover, they are both out siders, imperfect men in a foreign world who, in fear of standing still, turn to the road to provide the answers. In On The Road, Dean races from one end of the continent to the other, in an attempt to embrace all life. The furious pace at-which he sets his life finally overtakes him: he is pure will, energy, and speed. Not surprisingly, the only way that he can rebel against the mediocrity of life is with an onslaught of manic activity. When Dean 17 deserts Sal in Mexico while Sal is sick with dysentery, Dean's girl screams that he never takes life seriously and that he is just goofing all the time. This prompts Sal to see Dean as "the HOLY GOOF" (OTR,l60). He realizes that "Dean, by virtue of his enormous series of sins, was becoming the Idiot, the Imbecile, the Saint of the lot" {OTR,l60). But in Sal's eyes, his irresponsibility could be excused because of his innocence and his drive for ecstasy. Dean desires but cannot achieve; he yean1sfor beatitude but ends up a lost and beaten soul. He remains the quin tessence of Beat. Both Dean and Sal have their own code of life and they remain faithful to the quest for divine under standing to which they devoted their lives. Their quest is vital, even though it is doomed to failure. At the same time, their thirst for experience and ecstasy carries them through life on the road. As Sal says: "The only ones for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time" {OTR,9). For both Dean and Sal, the chance world of random experience on the road is life to ·them and they see the road as being holy. As a result, they possess an inspired faith that just a little further up·the road they will find "IT ... the moment when you know all and every-thing is decided forever." ( O'l'R, lOT) . . Accordingly, Dean and Sal see the country stretching out in front of them as a vast frontier and wait for the pearl to be delivered to them, but it never occurs. Yet they keep on moving and living, hoping to capture it once and for all. A parallel search for freedom, with the river substi- tuted for the road, occurs in Huckleberry Finn. For Huck and Jim, as well as Dean and Sal, escape from society presents a way of reaching what society ideally dreams of for itself. The river and its analogue, the road, is a source of beauty and peace of mind which above all provides the motion that carries the travelers away from a menacing civilization. In a busy, competitive world, Huck and Sal possess the independence of vagabonds. Huck is forever lighting out, expressing the irrepressible desire to escape. Nevertheless, Huck returns once more to responsibility at the end, only to decide that he will make for the "territory.n The river, like the road, is beautiful, powerful, and full of majesty. Bernard de Voto describes what it is that Huck and Jim experience on their river to freedom: It is something that "satisfies blind gropings of the mind" -- that there is something here which "lies beyond aware ness."14 That strange, blurred, mythic quality underlies Sal and Dean's movement on the road. As Huck and Jim shove ·their raft once again into the current, they immediately ..... feel l .. ne freedom and solitude of the river. Similarly, ·,.71-,en S;_-tl and Dean start across country _that same feeling of 19 exuberance and awe occurs. Only on the island and the raft do Huck and Jim have the chance to practice the idea of brotherhood. Huck explains that on the raft everyone should feel comfortable, content, and kind toward each other. This same humanity is expressed in the car when Sal travels with his other manic friends, trying to rid himself of the stifling authority of society. The vernacular sensibility of Huck and Jim is pitted against the genteel sensibility of the dominant culture. Their commitment to freedom and spontaneity corresponds to Kerouac's innocent vision of life. Sal perceives a wonder-filled world in nature and on the road; that marvelous innocence stands in direct contrast to the decadent and destructive society that surrounds him. Sal is the inheritor of Huck's passion for freedom. Kerouac profoundly experienced the nostalgia for the freedom of the frontier and a:regret for the loss of simplicity and spiritual inspiration. He groped for faith out of intellectual despair; anything was better than what· he saw as the valueless abyss of modern life. Boredom and desperation drove him to seemingly purposeless flights on the road. Sal, however, remains optimistic about his life: "No one can tell us that there is no God . . . Everything is fin~, God Exists, we know time . Furthermore we know ·America, we're at horne ... We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness" (OTR,218). It was this 20 kind of unflagging hope that perpetuated Kerouac's idealism. The final source for Dean and Sal's frenzied activities on the road must in retrospect be traced back to the social and cultural phenomenon of their generation. The Beats saw humanity after the Second World War as psychically living in the ruins of a civilization. From this point of view, the ones who survived had the least to lose because they were already psychically crushed: the Negro, the addict, the Beat hipster. Their egos had been sufficiently destroyed, forcing them to reject the demands of community and society. The outcast cannot fall back on society but instead must turn all his attention to the sheer freedom of the moment. "To swing" is to throw one's entire being into the moment and accept whatever happens, to accept the Now. Dean in his raving way must have twice as many experiences· as a normal, rational being. As soon as he digs Sal to the I limit, he races out and raps with Carlo Marx. As soon as he settles down with bis first wife, Marylou, he must devise a way to live with his other wife, Camille. At the same time, Denver has to be substituted for San Francisco as the hip center of the universe and then the West Coast takes precedence over the East. One ~hing enables Dean to lead this crazed double life: the road. Within the confines of the car, in the dark of . night or daytime, surrounded by mountains, forests, streams, 21 ( endless stretches of highway, suburbia and city, inter sections, redbrick alleys or neon-filled streets, the guilt and torment of conformity and society seem to vanish. Life itself replaces the awful, wracking doubts about existence. In this way Dean began to see the holiness of life, fully lived in the moment. For Sal, the road offers an opportunity to comprehend the meaning of himself and the universe. The literal journey through the cities and towns of America is in reality a symbolic journey of exploration through the depths of Sal's soul. Moreover, the familiar world that Sal inhabits bores him, spurring him on to leave the known and habitual life in order to explore the unknown and mystic. Like Adam, who possessed the knowledge of love and God, Kerouac desired to experience the mysterious and the for bidden. Adam failed and man was doomed to. search endlessly for what he could not find. Whether for purposes of achievement or flight, Kerouac undertook his voyages to reconcile life with his dream of life. So in a sense, Kerouac re-enacts the myth of a wandering Adam. The underlying reasons for Sal's quest in On The Road may be illuminated by looking at Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road," a poem that relates Whitman's voyage down a road that leads to the world, to others, and to the threshold of self-discovery. One of the first lessons that the road teaches is to be receptive: to accept everything and every- 22 one. No person or aspect of life should be rejected. Furthermore, Whitman realized that there was something unseen and undefinable about his experiences on the road to self-realization. He discovered, as Kerouac did, that the meaning of life and the search for one's identity required living fully and intensely in the moment. In addition, the self must be open to the world and to others. The goal of Whitman and Kerouac is finally inseparable from the journey itself. Self-discovery is a process, :a life time under taking; the possible moments of enlightenment or satori cannot sustain one thro11ghout one's entire life. The journey must be continuous. Two of Kerouac's contemporaries did not share his optimistic vision, refusing to believe that the journey down the road led.to paradise~ Louis Simpson, in his book of poetry At The End Of The Open Road, attempts to deal with the pathetic and tragic failure of the American Dream and myth. He feels that the American Dream is a disease and that the promises that seemed inherent in America were never realized. Moreover, America itself is a journey, as Simpson attests in the title of his collection of poems. In "Walt lmitman on Bear Mountain, 11 Simpson queries: "vlhere are you, Walt/The Open Road goes to the used-car 15 lot." The dream is doomed to failure. The American journey ends at the Pacific Ocean. In "Lines Written Near San Francisco," Alcatraz faces San FraDcisco Bay. The 23 speaker believesthat at the end of the open road awaits a prison, signifying that the restless American spirit to move must eventually end. John Barth exhibits a simi~ar unyielding view of the road. Jacob.Horner in The End Of The Road possesses no values that he can believe in wholeheartedly, making.action difficult for him. Moreover, he cannot choose a moral code, having no firm opinions. John Barth, speaking of Jake's role in the novel, says that he allows Jake to "carry a·ll . 16 non-myst.ical Value - thinking tO the end Of the road 1 If .. . -~:--:··. ~'- creating a very bleak picture of humanity. Barth's concept of goals and the character of man are so ambiguous that a dream of progress or freedom is not only irrelevant but meaningless. Before and after his trips on the road, Kerouac always required solitude and isolation to examine himself and his experiences. Three novels that illustrate this self-imposed exile are Desolation Angels, The Dharma Bums, and Big Sur. At Big Sur and Desolation Peak, Jack Duluo·z 's complacency and self-sufficiency turn into alienation and despair as he suffers from loneliness. Preferring to withdraw from the complexities of life, he seeks the solitude of nature, only to be unable to escape the torment of his own soul. He tries to absorb the world into himself by perceiving it in terms of his own sensibilities, but he eventqally falls into deep despair facing a reality that he can no longer 24 comprehend. While \valking in the mountains with Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums, Ray is fascinated by the things he sees and remains in a contemplative mood. He is aware of where he is and is able to relate to his surroundings. But at Big Sur and Desolation Peak, Jack experiences a powerful sense of dislocation and disconnection. At Desolation Peak, feelings of personal insignificance overwhelm Jack as he compares himself to the vast mountains surrounding him like Mount Hozomeen. His thoughts would instantly turn to the mystery of nature, death, and the void. The mountain he called Mien Mo near Big Sur struck him as an image right out of a horrible nightmare he had had. Out of this increasing paranoia, all nature around .the cabin becomes frightful and evil in his· state of mind. Kerouac's restless search for freedom would drive him on, causing him to shuttle back and forth_between solitude qnd the mass _hysteria of his friends on the road. With Neal Cassady, Kerouac found that his sheer joy for life could be expressed through the experience of jazz. Jazz centers itself around ·the moment. Accordingly, the jazz group creates the shape of the spontaneous piece, individuals improvise and both the jazzman and the hipster obtain release in the moment through the fusion of creativity and exuberance. Dean and Sal revel in the feeling without words that jazz speaks.to them .. Mention- 25 ing a jazz soloist, Sal says: "He had to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite soul exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows it's not the tune that counts but IT" (OTR,l70). IT is the knowing of the heart, the knowing of the emotions, devoid of words. The music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lester Young also influenced Kerouac, allowing him to remove all inhibitions and just go with his feelings in his writings. As a result, he incorporated the spontaneity that was involved in jazz into his conception of spontaneous prose, a process that was a celebration of the creative act. Furthermore, it was an attempt to express the intensity of the moment and capture the rush of sensations in prose. Kerouac was very aware of the sound of prose and '"'rote prose paragraphs in his own American speech rhythms. He had the capacity to hear his own vJTi ting; he would listen to his sentences as if they were musical or rhythmical constructions. Formulating a general principle of writing prose, Kerouac states: "The rhythm of how you decide to 'rush' yr statement determines the rhythm of the poem, whether it is a poem in verse-separated lines, or an endless 17 one-line poem called prose." Seeking a way to communicate his frustrations with the world, he sacrificed form for the momentary breakt.hroughs of feeling and awareness that came through his language. His 26 prose takes on a movement and anxiety all its own as it sweeps the reader along in a haze of sensations. Kerouac stated that the writer's function should be to "sketch the 18 flow that already exists intact in mind." This method of sketching began when he was writing On The Road. Inspired by the sincerity and emotional intensity that he found in Neal Cassady's letters, he proclaimed that prose should be an undisturbed flow from the mind. Since emotions and feelings were revered, he felt that the writer must not change or revise any of his initial impulses. The romantic belief that truth lies in basic human emotions makes.· spontaneity a value. In light of such a belief, the images of his mind took on a certain truth of their own, the truth of emotion. The confessional nature of spontaneous prose fit right in with Kerouac's goals of understanding and communicating with others. Since his novels reflected a world that he did not under$tand rationally, his concept of spontaneous prose had various results. --In On The Road and Visions Of Cody, random recol lections and experiences dissolve the structure of the books. One association or fragment of memory triggers the next series of unrelated thoughts. Dreams, actual scenes, sights, sounds, and images all merge with one another, causing the central focus to become lost in a mass of perceptions. In The Su!?terraneans, The Dharma Bums, and _f:)ig_ ~~£_, his extreme emotional need to reveal his 27 experiences comes across. The intensity of his-emotions is communicated through the rushing power of images, feelings, and ideas, imbuing the ordinary and commonplace with a raw and impulsive beauty. But when the focus is lost, the words pile upon one another in an onslaught of uninspired, meaningless repetitions& Kerouac believed that innocence was the highest virtue. In his novels, his treatment of primitive peoples disclosed his own longing for a pure and simple existence. Since innocence was desired, Kerouac sought the absolute freedom of the road.· The road offered a journey to self-realization and it was the only place where he could feel totally and ecstatically alive. When Sal and Dean embark on their mythic quest, they supply their own reasons to live: to live for the moment. Kerouac's love for simplicity and freedom is closely linked to his idealism. Kerouac -, s childlike awe of America enabled him to imagine it as a oromised land, another Eden. The Idea of A.merica was so overwhelming to Kerouac, a French Canadian and outsider, that he was drawn into believing in America as sheer promise, future and hope. Although reality never coincided with his expectations, he continued to believe in his dream. The freedom of a lost frontier drew Kerouic across the country with a force he was powerless to resist. It '{>.ra_s thf.:: same force tha.t in the nineteenth century 28 conquered the frontier. According to Frederick Jackson Turner, the frontier served as a safety valve for dissatisfied people who were restricted by past or present misfortunes. The seemingly endless free land to the West provided a second chance for 19 these people. The fact that free land has always existed on the West Coast instilled in the average American a dream of freedom and new opportunities. Moreover, the idea of a wilderness or frontier where man could exert his individu- ality, tame nature, and make a place for himself remained the dream of many Americans, including Kerouac, a half·- century later. The new kind of man who came out of the American West was a self-confident, energetic individualist. Kerouac shared the pioneer and backwoodsman spirit: an urge to quest into the unknown. To immigrants, America was the land of opport~t.mi ty, vast wealth, and strength; it gave them a chance to better themselves. Yet by 1890 the frontier was gone; the supply of free land had been exhausted. With the arrival of industrialization, a demand for social cooperation displaced the rugged individualism of the past. In the 1940's and SO's Kerouac was still searching for the frontier and still possessed the hope that he would find it. But as much as Kerouac dreamed of what should be, he always met the harsh, everyday reality of the outside world, 29 which plunged him into despair. His father had instilled a dream vision of America in him and Kerouac always hoped that America would live up to the dream. His idealism formed an integral part of his innocent vision. Further- more, his optimism was part of another American tradition identified with the beliefs of Emerson, Thoreau, and · Whitman. Kerouac believed implicitly in the American Dream. To him it meant man's potential greatness. He possessed an ever present faith in man's ability to transcend limitations. Against the conformity of his age, he felt that each individual must discover and live by his own truths. Thoreau similarly chose not to indulge in the trivialities of the nineteenth century and patiently attended to his own self-cultivation. Both Emerson and Thoreau shared an overwhelming faith in man's capabilities. Kerouac follows this tradition and approaches life with the same faith. At Big Sur, he reverts to being Ti Jean, the child, the last holy fool in the world who enjoys the simple pleasures _of life. Jack refers to both Whitman and Emerson, telling himself that he should practice self reliance. He feels that he should be able to enjoy "The infancy of the simplicity of just being happy in the woods, conforming to .. nobody's idea about what todo" (!38,30). Thoreau's stay at Walden Pond foreshadows Kerouac's frequent withdrawals to the mountains and nature. Both 30 Thoreau and Kerouac sought to escape the debilitating effects of the industrial revolution; they both wanted a simpler way of life, one of contemplation and insight where they could seek the Divine through nature. Emerson and Thoreau felt that one should establish a harmonious relationship with nature which offered a contentment and tranquility not found in human society. In Walden Thoreau demonstrates that it is possible to realize one's potential for ideal existence in the world. At the same time, Kerouac always dreamt of what he could ideally be; he saw himself as a great writer like Proust or Joyce and also the hero of his own novels. By believing that an ideal mode of life was within his grasp, he followed his dreams and attempted to live the life that he had imagined. Similarly, Thoreau preached confide.nce and joy, marveling at the richness and fullness of life. His belief in simplifying life corresponded to Kerouac's reverence for the simple existence that allows one to turn inward toward one's inner reality. In a condition of simplicity, one can immerse oneself in life and enjoy immediate experience. Kerouac did not experience the ecstatic integration wit.h nature that Thoreau achieved. The inspiration and understanding that Thoreau derived continually eluded him. Kerouac's retreats to nature might have provided some transcendent experience but he could not allow himself to 31. get in touch with his surroundings, to become receptive to natural beauty and knowledge. At Big Sur, Kerouac confronts a frightening, oppressive nature, where everything appears to portend dea~h. As he approaches his cabin, he looks down the thousand foot drop seeing an overturned chassis of a car. Even in a supposed wilderness, civilization has managed to infiltrate the solitude. Nature, which should soothe him, seems to turn against him. At one point, the wind begins to blow so fiercely that it drowns out the reassuring sounds of a creek. Night after night, Jack sits near the ocean recording its sounds for his poem "Sea." But as days fade into one another, he senses that the ocean doesn't want him there. By this time, Jack is completely cut off from nature, divided and despairing within himself. With a seemingly meaningless future before him and faced with a threatening natural world, he feels absolutely alone. At the end of the novel, Jack, Dave Wain and two girls return to the cabin. One of the girls, Billie, has fallen in love with Jack and thinks that Jack feels the same way about her. Jack sees the ocean as treacherous and thinks that it will kill Billie if he doesn't run down to save her. At the same time, he would drown himself if he had the courage. Even when he goes to the creek for water while undergoing delirium tremens, in his paranoia the water tastes like gasoline. Final~y, the river tells him to die because 32 everything is all over. For the first few days at Big Sur, he vows that he will quietly watch the world and attempt a Thoreau-like communion with nature, using neither booze nor drugs. Yet by the fourth day he is bored. Everything about the six weeks at Big Sur seems final. After leaving Big Sur and arriving at Monsanto's bookshop, he is told that his cat Tyke, who always reminded him of his dead brother, Gerard, has died. When he returns to the cabin with Dave Wain and the two girls,· the final horror begins. Jack is afflicted with delirium tremens and feels that he is going mad. But on the last night at the cabin, in the midst of hundreds of devils, vultures, and bats, he has. a vision of the cross. As a result, blessed relief finally comes; goodness suffuses his body and mind. By the end of the novel, the torture and misery of his days has become a memory. He vows to straighten out his affairs; he will go home to his mother, ieaving San Francisco behind. Believing that the Golden Eternity will bless all things, he says: "Something good will come out of all things yet--And it will be golden and eternal just like that" (BS,216). In his mind, nothing ever happened; his faith miraculously has carried him through. By going through pain and torture, Jack exemplifies the epitome of beatness, yet he is able to overciome the horrifying experience through his faith in the Golden Eternity. 33 Kerouac also shared Whitman's love for mankind. To Whitman, to be a free man, to live from within, to dominate one's own destiny was a heroic undertaking. Whitman's ideal man was a singer of the self, a man of imaginat~~n and vision. He constantly emphasized the self: the ideas, experiences, spiritual insights, and psychological states. Similarly, Kerouac discovered that the experiences that he and his friends were having could be the subject of literature; his experiences mattered and had meaning. Like Whitman, he celebrates his own self, his individuality, and his personality, which prompted him to write a group of books that he referred to as the Duluoz Legend, the chronicle of his life. In the preface to Big Sur, he states: "The whole thing forms one enormous comedy, seen through the eyes of poor Ti Jean (me) , otherwise known as Jack Duluoz." Consequentiy, his work is highly auto biographical and his novels are all·tied together by the presence of the "I", the fictive Kerouac in various di~guises. Kerouac produced a lifetime of writing about what he had seen with his own eyes and used a vernacular expressive prose that approximated his vision. Like \vhi tman, Kerouac saw divinity in the ordinary life of man. Whitman as poet became part of everyonearound him; he saw all and condemned nothing. "Song of Myself" presents the poet's journey through life and the spiritual knowledge he seeks along the way. Believing that it is 34 possible to achieve communion with God through love and contemplation, Whitman bears a message of faith for all Americans. Kerouac's statement that "It always makes me proud to love the world somehow--Hate's so easy compared" (BS,l41) provides a perfect counterpart to Whitman's faith. Furthermore, a belief that the human spirit would prevail against all obstacles was held by Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, and Kerouac alike. The major theme of Kerouac's novels is the confron tation of innocence and experience. Stifled by his community, terrified by society, Jack Duluoz rebels against his world. His subsequent experiences on the fringes of society (drugs, mystic visions, sexual experiences) render him unable to fully return to the world he left behind. Broken, he can never be completely restored, so he harbors a permanent need to escape. In reaction, Kerouac raises a defensive shield and relies on an innocent vision of the world that betrayed him. Kerouac was troubled by the lack of caritas (sympathy and kindness) in the contemporary world: "All the pretti ness of tapestries, lands, people--worthless if there is no sympathy--Poets of genuis are just decorations on the wall v-lithout the poetry of kindness and Caritas" (LT,88). Hence, he felt that one should accept all people. His early relationship with his brother Gerard affected him greatly, causing him ·to attempt. to susi:a in this -loving attitude into 35 the adult world. His brother's death at the age of nine crushed Kerouac; he turned his ideal love for Gerard toward Neal Cassady, whom he always thought of as his dead brother reincarnated. Kerouac thought of Neal Cassady as the great American hero of his fiction. He saw Neal as another lost soul, hoping and dreaming in spite of his plight. Neal's dream of happiness was achieved through sex, love, and spontaneous action. In Dean Moriarty, modeled on·Neal Cassady in On The Road, Kerouac created the hero of the Beat Generation. Dean (Cody) is the embodiment of innocence. R.W.B. Lewis' figure of heroic innocence, the American Adam closely resembles Dean. As Lewis sees it~ the new hero of nineteenth century 2 fiction was connected with Adam before the Fall. ° Kerouac incorporates an Adam-like innocence into the heroes of his novels; they continually revert to the past or seek a lost Eden. Sal and Dean search for heroic experience. Dean acts as a reckless catalyst for enthusiasm and turmoil. Having never had a stable job, family, or community, he rejects conformi·ty and exults in his individuality and eccentricity. Dean searches for the final act that will reveal his true heroism. Acting with abandon, he is open to any new idea and can accept anything on faith. But he fails to make-distinctions; like a child, he does not analyze or eva J:uate the world he encounters. He $imply experiences it. 36 Accordingly, his delight in the energy and fullness of life is expressed 1n innocent wonder. He does not admit the seriousness and consequences of his actions. Neither Dean nor Sal confront their problems but escape throughconsuming action, drugs, or dreams. In remaining faithful to the vision that will transcend their sorrow-filled lives,·they meet only more sorrow. Kerouac valued the innocence of children, feeling that they were able to perceive the world in the proper way, to experience a joyous delight in life. To escape from the destructive impulses of society, Kerouac turned to the road. The road that beckoned to Kerouac demanded that he break out of himself and encounter, and at the same time, transcend the world. Kerouac questioned his existence and rejected the limitations and conditions imposed by the life that he was born in to by setting out on the open road. In his novels, Kerouac shared a journey and a vision with the reader, a vision of innocence made up of his love of simplicity, his quest for freedom, and his idealism. Kerouac's reverence for spontaneity and its attendant emotions led him to develop his method of spontaneous prose, a working example of the exuberance of the creative act. He devoted his life to writing and to his quest to fully.under stand the self. In place of chaos, death, torment, doubt, and disbelief, Kerouac, in his best writing, substituted an extraordinary sense of the self and a vision of experience 37 as encompassing all m~aning. Furthermore, he transcended the tragedy of his life through the innocent hope of his novels. The restless energy of his prose exhibited the power of the simple virtues he believed in. Fantasies, visions, and dreams made up his life, a life devoted to joining the past and future in the present and living moment. 38 FOOTNOTES 1 Robert A. Hipkiss, Jack Kerouac: Prophet Of The New Romanticism (Lawrence, Kansas: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1976)' p. 2. 2 Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums (New York: New · American Library, 1959r;-p. 191. All subsequent references to Kerouac•s novels will apply to the specific editions listed in the Bibliography and will be cited in the text as follows: OTR for On The Road, DA for Desolation Angels, DS for Dr. Sax, LS for Lonesome Traveler, P for Pic, DB for The Dharma-Bums, SUB for The Subterraneans;-TAC for The Town And The City, VOC for viSions Of Cody. ,__ 3 John Tytell, Naked Angels: The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1976); p.g. 4 John Clellon Holmes, Nothing More To Declare (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1967)-,-p. 77. 5 seymour Krim, You And Me (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974), p. --nl-.- 6 Hlp . k'lSS, p. 66 • 7 Holmes, p. 85. 8 Tony Tanner, Cl't y Of Wor d s (Lon d on: The Trinity Press, 1971), p. 432. 9Norman Mailer, The White Negro (San Francisco: City Liqhts Books, 1957), p.-r 10 . Holmes, p. 84. Jl . · Bruce Cook, The Beat Generation (New York: Charles ::::cribner 's Sons, 197I""f; p:-52. 12 Holmes, p. 84. 1 -rul.,p.l.3 b. 10 14p\ . ] . y d -~l .lp oung, Ernes t Hem1ngway: . A Recons1. era t.10n (Fr~w York: Harcourt, Brace-; &vJorld, Inc-:-, 1952), p. 218. 39 15 LOUlS. s.lmpson, At The End Of The Open Road (Middletmvn, Connecticut: Wesleyanuniversity Press, 1960), p. 64. 16navid Morrell, John Barth: An Introduction (University Park, Pennsylvania-:-ThePennsylv.ania State University Press, 1976), p. 16. 17nonald M. Allen (ed.), The New American Poetry: 1945-1960 (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1960), p. 414. 18Thomas Parkinson (ed.), A Casebook On The Beat (New York: Thomas Y.Crowell Co.~ 1961), p.~8-.-- 19Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier In American History (New York: Holt, Rinehart;-and Winston-,-1920), PP. 9-13. 20 R. w. B. Lewis, The American Adam (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1955), pp. 5-8. 40 BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, Donald M. (ed.). The New American Poetry 1945-1960. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1960. Barth, John. The End Of The Road. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc-.-,-1958-.-- Carlisle, E~ Fred. The Uncertain Self: Whitman's Drama · Of Identity. Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1973. Charters, Ann. Kerouac. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Press, 1973. Cook, Bruce. The Beat Generation. New York: Charles Scribner~Sons, 1971. Hipkiss, Robert A. Jack Kerouac: Prophet Qf The New Romanticism. Lawrence, Kansas: The Regents Press Of Kansas, 1976. Holmes, John Clellon. Nothing More To Declare. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1967.- Kerouac, Jack. Big Sur. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Cudahy, 1962. Book Of Dreams. San Francisco: City Lights ---~ooks, 1961. . Desolation Angels. London: Panther Books, 1960. The Dharma Burns. New York: New American Library, 1959:-- Dr. Sax. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1959. Lonesome Traveler. New York: Ballantine Books, l960. Maggi~ ~assady. New York: Avon Books, 1959. Mexico City Blues. New York: Grove Press, Inc., ·---l-9 59-.-- 41 On The Road. New York: New American Library, 1957-. Pic. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1971. Satori In Paris. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1966. The Subterraneans. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958-.- The Town And The City. London: Quartet Books, 1973-.------ Vanity Of Duluoz. New York: Coward-HcCann, 1967. Visions Of Cody. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972:"" Visions Of Gerard. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976. Konvitz, Milton R. 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Boston: Houghton Mifflin~957. Turner, Frederick Jackson. .The Frontier In American History. New York: Holt, Rinehart,and Winston, 1920. Twain, Mark. Huckleberry Finn. New York: Airmont Books, 1962. Tytell, John. Naked Angels: The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill Book!Co., 1976·.-- wnitman, Walt. Leaves Of Grass. New York: New American Library, 1958. Young, Philip. Ernest Hemingway: ~Reconsideration. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., 1952.