Jack Kerouac was born on the 12th of March of 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts (USA). He had French-Canadian origins, his childhood was marked by the premature big brother’s death, because of rheumatic fever. In 1940, he gained a sports scholarship to Columbia University of New York, where he started studying English literature.

After a year, he dropped out of college, due to his anarchist character and started doing odd jobs like a gas man, handyman, and waiter.

He enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 1943 but was discharged after only 10 days of service, because of his short temper. In 1944, he fell in with some artists and writers, that would eventually define a literary movement: known as “Beat Generation”. Vivid, impulsive always searching for freedom, this was the Beat Generation; the word beat reminds us to the heartbeat, that is unstoppable and everlasting, such as the author‘s desire to live, to travel and to explore the world. Then, he started a period, characterized by hetero and homosexual promiscuity, alcohol abuse and drug abuse, like morphine, marijuana, and Benzedrine. In 1946 his father died. He was in and out of prison and knew Neal Cassady, who became one of his best friends and literary inspiration. Started a series of travel through the United States of America, Mexico, and Europe, always writing different novels. He had some marriages and died when he was 47, on the 21st of October of 1969, in Florida, because of liver cirrhosis. On the road was published in 1957, translated in Italy in 1959. He wrote the entire novel over one three-week bender of frenzied composition, on a single scroll of paper that was 120 feet long, in 1951. On the Road is a barely fictionalized account of the road trips with his friend Neal Cassady, known in the book as Dean Moriarty and the author himself in the narrator of the story: Sal Paradise. Sal is a literature student, who starts a series of travel from New York to San Francisco, trough Denver, Chicago and Dallas by bus or by hitchhiking. At first, he is lonely but then is accompanied by Carlo Marx, Old Bull Lee, Ed, Marylou, who correspond to really existed people.

In these travels, he always does odd jobs like picking cotton in the fields or becoming a night watchman. In his travel, Sal always wants to try all the forbidden and new things, of course, it is all packed with sex, alcohol, drug, and jazz. However, after weeks and months of inner iniquity, Sal wants to live a normal life, with a real job and a home; but it is not important for how long when he meets Dean, they start a new trip without doubts.

In 2012, in the film adaptation, by Walter Salles, we can see some famous, but emerging actors like Kristen Stewart as Marylou (Dean’s first wife) and Kristen Dunst as Camille (Dean’s second wife), Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty and at least Sam Riley as Sal Paradise. The film presents some differences compared to the Italian version of the book, this is because the literary adaptation is from the English version obviously. For example in the movie Sal is French-Canadian, while in the 1959 Italian version is Italo-Canadian, such as his mother in the book become his aunt in the film or on one hand the first met with Dean is suddenly after his divorce, on the other hand, it is after Sal’s father died and so on.

In my opinion, it is very hard for a filmmaker to live up to the expectations of a book, in particular, if the book in question is the Beat Generation poster.

From the chronological point of view and the relevance to the facts, Salles did a very good job, but if a person sees the film without reading the book, he won’t fully appreciate the intrinsic meaning. This is because we are talking about a novel written in one go, maybe on drugs and if we made a film about this, we would have a series of nonsensical and blurred scenes.

The main theme in the book is the same in the film, it is the travel one. Often this travel is more important than the destination as well, always accompanied by delirium, drunkenness and the search for a new spiritual authenticity. They do all these experiences through the refusal of conventions like family, common sense, a steady job and so on.

Travels, alcohol, drugs, and sex are just safety valves and protests from the second post-war youngers against the middle class, materialism, and conformism. While you are reading the book seems that the frenetic beat emerges from the pages, and from the jazz notes, you can almost listen to Armstrong, Eldrige and Parker’s songs. Travel is a synonym of freedom, and freedom is Sal’s final objective. Initially, Sal thinks that he can reach this freedom only by Dean’s help, but subsequently, he understands that can do this only without Dean. Travel, freedom, but above all research. Research of what? First of all, we should find ourselves. Because only through inner knowledge, we can reach real happiness; only when we fall in the abyss of perdition, we can raise ourselves and follow our dreams.

“The only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing…  but burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night.”

I chose to analyze this novel because it was written 68 years ago and I think it is very modern. My personal re-interpretation of On the road is more focused on my reality, this reality is very far from Dean’s lifestyle, but I found in him some “escape” moments. These moments are necessary, in order to appreciate my reality and my aims. I saw in Sal and Dean a combination of rational and irrational parts of the same person. These are the same parts that live inside us, without one, there cannot be the other. In my opinion, true happiness is to be perfectly conscious about our limits, because only then we can overcome them and we will be able to fight for something. Something which is not traveling aimlessly, something concrete, something true.