The Beats of Kerouac's Form Jessica Baker
In Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Sal Paradise experiences up-beat and down-beat moments while he and his friends chase after the next ecstasy. They find this ecstasy when they pour their souls into a single thing in an attempt to transcend the physical world and escape reality. For Kerouac, On the Road seems to be that thing: its form is like water falling, words gushing out continuously. Kerouac uses form as a backdrop to emphasize the content, like music in a movie. The narration, syntax, and diction convey the atmosphere of scenes throughout the book. Sal Paradise is the first person narrator of On the Road. Kerouac never presents a clear physical image of Sal: “I took a straight picture that made me look like a thirty-year-old Italian who'd kill anybody who said anything against his mother” (6) is the only description of him, and it is distorted. The reader does not even know his name until the sixth chapter. Thus, more than anything else, Sal Paradise is the voice that guides the reader. The tone of that voice varies depending on the scene. As long as Sal is in motion and his life is a blur, his paragraphs are long, rambling, and unfocused. The first paragraph of the book, for example, is about Dean Moriarty, but Sal includes his ex-wife, a “serious illness,” Dean's birth, the road, Chad King, Carlo Marx, Marylou, New York, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and Nietzsche all into that same paragraph. People enter the narrative for brief glimpses never to appear again, such as the “first cowboy I saw, walking along… in a ten-gallon hat and Texas boots” (17), while other characters show up and then disappear only to show up again later, like Eddie and Dean. This seems to be a reflection of Paradise's life: he's constantly roaming and all the people around him are living similar lifestyles. He never stays with the same people for more than a few days. The skipping, digressive form emphasizes the fact that Sal has no commitment to his relationships and no tangible goal in what he does. While Sal is partying, hitchhiking, and bar hopping, his narrative voice remains energetic: “He went seventy. I tingled all over” and “the only Word I had was `Wow!'” (35). Passages full of motion are marked with exclamations like “And we moved!” (134). This energetic voice underlines the need Sal has for movement: as long as Sal is going as fast as he can, his romantic image of the road can be maintained. If he keeps moving, he does not have to face the reality that his body is exhausted and that apple pie, ice cream, liquor, and cigarettes are not enough to sustain him. But as soon as Sal stops moving, his world slows down, reality catches up with him, and the narrative voice looses its bounce. A slow, restless tone replaces the energy as cheap, lonely hotels replace bars full of friends: “I woke up as the sun was reddening… I didn't know who I was… haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing… all the sad sounds” (15) and “We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell,” fades to “In the morning I woke up and turned over; a big cloud of dust rose from the mattress… We coughed and sneezed. Our breakfast consisted of stale beer” (55). This contrast in form sets up a background for Kerouac's theme: the beat generation resisted getting stuck in any one place or with any one person, and longed to be as free as possible. Jack Kerouac's syntax also works to reinforce this theme. Throughout the book, Kerouac maintains a rhythm in his sentences that is almost like the hip-hop music of his time. In sections where Sal Paradise chases ecstasy, or when he actually manages to find it, the sentences are longer, continuing on when the reader would expect an end: 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, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiances shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. (173). In this sentence, Sal reaches his “point of ecstasy,” and the result is a 98 word sentence in the middle of a paragraph that continues on to the end of the chapter. Starting with “and” connects this sentence to the previous one, rushing the reader from one sentence to another without a chance to take a breath. In other sentences, he does not even use a period and conjunction, but speeds up the reader further but using a semi-colon: “it makes you shudder; my feet tingled” (173). This lack of pauses in the sentences matches Sal's lack of pause, allowing the reader to feel how Sal rushes headlong down whatever road he is on. He feels that if he keeps running as fast as he can, he will never get caught up in one place for too long, and “all the evil skulls of this world” (71) will not be able to take away the freedom he finds on the road. By contrast, moments when Sal is still, or caught in a place too long, are written with shorter sentences in shorter paragraphs: Everything seemed to be collapsing. As we were going out to the car Babe slipped and fell flat on her face. Poor girl was over-wrought. Her brother and Tim and I helped her up. We got in the car; Major and Betty joined us. The sad ride back to Denver began. (56). This entire paragraph has fewer words than the one sentence in ecstasy. The sentences are simple, with understated verbs: either the verb is a to-be verb, or it comes at the end of the sentences. This creates sentences with weight on the end, causing the beat of the paragraph to be solemn instead of excited. Also, the short sentences result in an almost broken feel, as if Sal wants to talk in the flowing manner of his more ecstatic passages but cannot manage it. These down-beat paragraphs show Sal's loathing for being stuck, both in form and content. Kerouac's word choice emphasizes the contrast between Sal's up and down beats. In passages that take place at parties and on the road, the verbs are active, strong, and frequent: “the music was there blasting and blasting and he stood transfixed in the open door, screaming” (201), or “But I didn't die, and walked four miles and picked up ten long butts and took them back to Marylou's hotel room and poured their tobacco in my old pipe and lit up” (173). So many active verbs give the passages a faster, upbeat rhythm which accentuates Sal's excitement as well as his need to keep moving. As soon as he slows down, he has time to think clearly, and the word “sad” - a contrast to his use of “mad” - is used to describe everything, even one of his shirts: “the whole enormous sadness of a shirt” (59). The language becomes more passive in these scenes, with more words like “seemed,” “were,” and “got” (56). Even the active verbs inspire a downcast feeling: “slipped,” “fell,” and “ride back” (56). Kerouac also uses long words throughout the book, such as “enormous” to describe the sadness of a shirt, and “tremendous revelations” (195), which characterize Sal as a man with a big, romantic picture of his lifestyle. Even though he has nothing and has accomplished nothing, the long words show that he believes in the greatness of being on the road and being free. The contrast between scenes of movement and stillness is made clear through both the content and the form. The form works as music, rhythmic and emotional, to reinforce the content, emphasizing Sal Paradise's desire to remain free of everything, including death and time. Yet, when there is stillness, the reader can see the taxing demands life on the road places on Sal- exhaustion, loneliness, and sorrow.
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