On The Road

"They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn..." Part 1, Chapter 1.

Perhaps one of the most easily recognizable works where a journey is one of the focal points is the Beat classic On The Road by Jack Kerouac. The work focuses on the mad dash across the country made by Sal Paradise and the crazy, colorful, wonderful people he meets and learns from and teaches along the way. On The Road

"Our battered suitcases were were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life." Part 3, Chapter 5.

In Kerouac's novel his protagonist starts off the story as a disenchanted youth, scraping out a living squatting in his mother's house in Brooklyn. Sal Paradise thirsts for something more than what he has seen, he thirsts for inspiration, for something to be able to write about, something to enrich himself.

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion." Part 2, Chapter 4.

The protagonist finds this zest that he was in search of in a mad, hot, rush of a journey across the United States sometimes at the side of Dean Moriarty, another more wild ruckus youth, who opens up the magic of the road for Paradise.

For Paradise, and in turn his author and basis, Kerouac, a journey is a representation of the true unhinged freedom America has to offer. The road is an opening door, an outlet to find anything one's heart desires. The road is a way to meet the people and see the places that change and alter the perceptions.

"And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels..." Part 2, Chapter 10

As the story evolves and Sal Paradise weaves across the American continent he finally becomes the man he sought after in his mother's dingy apartment. He sees things that inspire and intrigue him, he meets the people that help to shape his voice, and from these pieces he acquires On The Road he forms a new man.

"Behind us lay the whole of America and everything Dean and I had previously known about life, and life on the road. We had finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic." Part 4, Chapter 5