Jack Kerouac´s "On the Road". Intertextuality and Allusion in the Novel (PDF)

Scientific Essay from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: The novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac is often characterised as a travelogue. To a certain degree, this might work since the author made some travels around the United States before working on the Novel. Even the routes of his trips resemble to some degree the routes within On the Road. In 1947 Kerouac travelled from New York to Illinois, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, California and back to New York. In 1950, he took another long trip, which led him from New York to Denver, Texas and Mexico. Nevertheless On the Road is more than a description of autobiographic experiences on the road. Other critics underline the autobiographic role of balancing accounts with his friendship to Neal Cassidy who serves in the alias of Dean within the novel. Others criticized the novel as being no more than a manifest for the Beat culture, a "puff piece" for a life as tramp, consuming drugs and departure from a "normal life". This work will try to point out some of the meanings and allusions hidden in the novel. Chapter 1 will set On the Road in connection with earlier "hobo-literature" to elucidate Kerouac's ideals of a life as a tramp. As a kind of travelogue On the Road is about movement and thus about space. Chapter 2 will show what space or the change of space means for the novel and how it constitutes the matter of time within the novel. Chapter 3 focusses the "dynamics of friendship" - the development of the protagonist's friendship. The last chapter deals with the quest for experience, which is one of the most prominent intertextual ingredients in the novel. On the Road was frequently referred to as "novel of initiation" or description of a spiritual pilgrimage.