'Kerouac’s America: Jazz and Life on the Road Essay\r'

' knee bend Kerouac’s On the alley portrays the entire spectrum of the Statesn live- from the migrant worker to the deranged artist to the midwestern promoteer. All of these discordant figures he blends together into virtuoso tapestry, creating a picture of the United States that, even if sometimes bleak, is always sympathetic. Kerouac’s vision of America is top hat reflected by dint of his observations on jazz and life on the road. Jazz has often been called the only truly American art form and its place in On the avenue is appropriately significant.\r\nWhen Kerouac writes of be-bop jam sessions he describes these events as decidedly overmuch violent, more passionate, and more vi fitting than the typical concert. In cardinal instance, a saxist’s solo drives Dean Moriarty into a trance, â€Å" lay his hands, [and] pouring sweat on the domain’s keys…” (198). Sal and Dean use jazz as a means of breaking through the staid consistency of 1950s America, feeding off its infectious energy. Having big(p) intolerant of dull, prosaic take in Sal proclaims, â€Å"the only race for me are the disturbed ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved…” (5).\r\nOn the Road itself is the product of such a creative frenzy, liberal of wild run-on sentences and disjointed syntax. The urgency observable in Jazz is besides at the lineage of Sal and Dean’s travels across the country. They roam from slideway to coast oftentimes without any concrete want besides the joy of the ride and an innate restlessness. They lowtake to somehow transcend the physical world through drugs or sex or non-stop conversation, alone never quite reach the â€Å" ‘IT,’” of which Dean speaks to Sal. Jazz does chuck up the sponge them to approach something near this quasi-religious transcendence and thus, they shrine jazz musicians as saints, or even gods.\r\nIn one instance, Dean ad amantly refers to the blind pianist George clip as â€Å" ‘Old divinity fudge Shearing! ’” and to his empty piano seat as â€Å" ‘God’s empty chair” (128). The Jazz clubs carry as secular churches for Sal and his companions, places where uncannyity can be revitalized and restored. The â€Å"Beat” figures portrayed in On the Road do not seek to pulverise social and religious traditions, as many would suggest, but rather to restore some of their soulfulnessfulness, their purity. Jazz, at its best, serves as medium to help usher in this in the raw paradigm.\r\nKerouac asserts that, in a way, America’s true(p) religion is its music. Nowhere in On the Road is the American scene painted as comfortably as on Sal’s first experience with life on the road. That initial experience, as well as those that follow it, lends Sal a deeper insight into a set of truly American types. He meets with drifters, farm boys, and migrant w orkers hitching a ride on the sustain of a pickup truck. The feeling of easy comradeliness between the fellow hitchhikers is nowhere to be effect in contemporary America- the farm boys’ call â€Å" ‘sroom for everybody’” recalls a much different time (22).\r\nKerouac’s America moves not only at the break neck pace of a Charlie Parker saxophone solo, but as well slows to the pace of characters like Mississippi Gene whose â€Å" expression [is] musical and slow” (23). Whereas life in the urban center is characterized by loud jazz played recent into the night, life on the road is filled with slow, melodious voices like that of Mississippi Gene. Mississippi Gene also brings out the dark side of life on the road, telling Sal that he’ll â€Å" ‘folly a man down an alley’” if he ever take money (23), though most of the characters Sal meets are draw as â€Å"grateful and gracious” (28).\r\nBy hitchhiking, S al is able to form genuine bonds with folks just fight to get by, and this sense of egalitarian fellowship pervades his journey. The road not only allows Sal to meet people he might not ordinarily come in contact with, but also to gain more knowledge of himself. When Dean cries out at the commencement of one journey that â€Å"we should realize what it would mean to us to understand that we’re not really upturned active anything,” one senses that traveling, for Sal and Dean, is as much about letting go of yourself as it is about getting to your destination.\r\nSal, however, never seems to achieve this letting go, weighed down by a cry of â€Å"What gloom! ” (52). But on that point are moments in which he approaches that ecstatic evince Dean refers to as â€Å"IT,” as in a conversation on one cross-country berth with Dean, where Sal describes â€Å"our final excited joy in public lecture and living” (209). But of course, On the Road portrays experience much more varied than pure wide ecstasy. The aforementioned dark side of life on the road looms everywhere in the novel and extends encourage than just the supposition of being mugged or assaulted.\r\n in that respect is also the problem of too much freedom- the possibility that one will roam so much that one will permanently lose one’s center. Dean’s New York flat tire contains â€Å"the same battered trunk stuck out from under the bed, ready to fly,” suggesting that no matter where he goes, his soul is always on the road (250). One begins to marvel if Sal and Dean’s journeys are motivated as much by an attempt to escape themselves as to see the country. But though the trials of the road leads Sal at a one point to lament that he’s â€Å"sick and tired of life” (106), he also â€Å"figures the gain” of traveling above its inevitable losses.\r\nHere, Kerouac subverts business terminology like â€Å"loss” and à ¢â‚¬Å"gain,” and gives them a spiritual import, illuminating the central thrust of On the Road- Americans should start thinking about spiritual lettuce rather than just economic dominance. Accruing such spiritual profit involves taking risks and being able to tit the freedom to travel uncharted physical, mental, and spiritual territory. This key principle of freedom is at the root of both jazz and life on the road, whether one is exploring a landscape or the nuances of a musical phrase. In On the Road, Jack Kerouac wrote of an America that celebrated these freedoms.\r\n'