1.

My favorite quote that can be used to sum up the whole idea of the Beat Generation
comes from Ginsberg himself, “Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.”
This short quote gives a pretty good outline of what the Beat Generation and its
proponents were all about. They were slaves to their perceived notions of freedom, be
it sexual, political, or personal freedom. For a brief time in US history the Beat
Generation personified the animalistic part of the US citizen, the citizen who was not
afraid to be a little mad, searching for a higher meaning while not abiding the prescribed
laws, both political, and natural. They would engage in drug-addled séances and
alcoholic fervor in order to achieve their fulfillment, and to put it in the most blunt way,
they were people who were not afraid to live their lives in opposition to which was
considered normal in the time when sexual, racial, and political oppression was most
noticeable.
2. Journey is probably the biggest theme encountered in the novel, visible in the title of
Kerouac’s work. The journey undertaken is both spiritual and physical in its core,
depicting a quest for fulfillment which never can be actually achieved no matter how
hard a person tries. Physically, the journey spans the entire US, and can be viewed as a
sightseeing novel woven with subtle talks of how a person tries to fulfill himself by
running away from himself, in the end trying to find both love for himself and others,
as well as freedom, all the while being in fundamental conflict the capitalist tendencies
of the time.
3. Not only does the persona of Old Bull, a person who in the latter part of his life actively
engages in drug-taking and is openly mad. You can’t really tell if that is the drugs
talking, or if that is who he really is. The fact that he is like that only corroborates the
idea of the novel and the Beat Generation that the madness visible in the novel does not
come from any drug, any alcoholic beverage or trauma; it is simply a thing that defines
you. Old Bull is seen as some kind of a guru, a person who rejected all of society’s gifts
in order to work on his art, and to support his freedom through madness. On the other
hand, the crisis of capitalism is visible in the various jobs Sal takes on during his
physical journey through the US, never being able to stay in one place for too long, or
even better, take on a long-standing job which would support him and others by his side.
Partly this is out of the capitalistic tendency to overcrowd the workplace, partly because
of the fact he simply couldn’t find himself belonging into the common people.
4. Dean is the person with whom Sal is completely enamored with, but not in a romantic,
or even sexual way, even though his thoughts and perception of Dean can sometimes be
ambiguous. Dean’s devil-may-care nature and recklessness both appall and attract Sal,
who desperately wants to be like Dean, but at the same time is horrified by how much
of a destructive influence on him he is. He constantly defends him in his wrongdoings
even though he is fully aware of how bad of an influence he can be. Dean is also the
main reason Sal embarks on the road, and every time they meet in the novel and spend
time together, it brings the best and the worst in them.
5. The IT in On the Road is brought up only in two instances; when Dean speaks about
God, and when Dean speaks about time. It can be said that these two things, even though
seemingly they have nothing with each other, are mutually not exclusive. God can be
seen as some kind of an ideal, a perfect thing towards which a person should strive for,
but someone’s God can be anything they long for and worship, be it physical or non-
physical. Time, on the other hand, can’t be tamed and can’t be stopped. So, I would say
that when Dean speaks about IT, what he really speaks about is that IT is something he
 constantly longs for, an ideal of something he himself is not really sure what it is, all the
while realizing that he simply does not have the time to achieve that illusive ideal.
6. The hardest question in my opinion is what is my road. I would say there are several
roads that constantly alternate, because I’m still figuring out my destination. I’m trying
to deal with the trip as smoothly as possible and that’s why I sometimes miss the best
views, because I tend to stick to my comfort zone. For now, I want to travel surrounded
by the people I enjoy spending time with. My goal is making sure the destination,
whichever it turns out to be, is worth the trip.