“ Nature and Our Innate Destructive and Primitive Qualities”
On The Road by John Kerouac explores the spiritual and physical experience of his narrator, Sal Paradise, travelling with his friends in a post-war era imbuing the spirit of anti-conformity and rejection of materialism. Sal Paradise, along with Dean who is a very close friend, explore America through hitch-hiking, reckless behavior, and moments of brief and unusual stability in their lives where they settle down. John Kerouac uses Sal Paradise’s journey to illustrate Sal’s insatiable quench to travel which is based on Sal’s mindset of how the journey itself is the true adventure. Sal also struggles with maintaining relationships with family, friends, and his significant other’s …show more content…
However, once Sal reaches Mexico and spends the night in the jungle he forms this connection with nature and his surroundings that shows him reality and strips him of his false perception on life. He transforms these warm and optimistic thoughts into more cynical and judgemental ones. Sal describes his experience with intense emotions as he says“ I realize the jungle takes you over and you become it,”(294). As personifying the jungle, Sal inadvertently admits that he, or his thought process, is becoming rotten and infected as jungles are with mosquitos, filth, and …show more content…
Sal states, “Life was dense, dark, ancient,” as he passed a jungle associating his experience with nature with the past and how innately human nature is to be primitive and animalistic (298). Sal goes on to further his comparison of how the jungle is embodied in life by stating, “This was the great and final, wild uninhibited Fellahin-childlike city that we knew we would find at the end of the road,” (301). He depicts the city as “wild” and “uninhibited” which again connotates to how jungles are filled with animals that are barbaric and possess un-human like qualities. Even as Dean leaves Sal stranded with dysentery, Sal forgives him as he rationalizes his behavior as understandable. Even though erratic and untamed, like a primitive animal, Dean isn’t afraid to abandon his friends and often is so careless in his actions but Sal seems to come to accept this side of him as normal. Sal realizes that there is nothing Dean can truly do to change his actions because it’s impulsive and characteristic of him. Sal is able to reason that this abandoning and ruthless side of Dean is the more natural state of humans, filled with woes and sadness, yet primitive and
On The Road by John Kerouac explores the spiritual and physical experience of his narrator, Sal Paradise, travelling with his friends in a post-war era imbuing the spirit of anti-conformity and rejection of materialism. Sal Paradise, along with Dean who is a very close friend, explore America through hitch-hiking, reckless behavior, and moments of brief and unusual stability in their lives where they settle down. John Kerouac uses Sal Paradise’s journey to illustrate Sal’s insatiable quench to travel which is based on Sal’s mindset of how the journey itself is the true adventure. Sal also struggles with maintaining relationships with family, friends, and his significant other’s …show more content…
However, once Sal reaches Mexico and spends the night in the jungle he forms this connection with nature and his surroundings that shows him reality and strips him of his false perception on life. He transforms these warm and optimistic thoughts into more cynical and judgemental ones. Sal describes his experience with intense emotions as he says“ I realize the jungle takes you over and you become it,”(294). As personifying the jungle, Sal inadvertently admits that he, or his thought process, is becoming rotten and infected as jungles are with mosquitos, filth, and …show more content…
Sal states, “Life was dense, dark, ancient,” as he passed a jungle associating his experience with nature with the past and how innately human nature is to be primitive and animalistic (298). Sal goes on to further his comparison of how the jungle is embodied in life by stating, “This was the great and final, wild uninhibited Fellahin-childlike city that we knew we would find at the end of the road,” (301). He depicts the city as “wild” and “uninhibited” which again connotates to how jungles are filled with animals that are barbaric and possess un-human like qualities. Even as Dean leaves Sal stranded with dysentery, Sal forgives him as he rationalizes his behavior as understandable. Even though erratic and untamed, like a primitive animal, Dean isn’t afraid to abandon his friends and often is so careless in his actions but Sal seems to come to accept this side of him as normal. Sal realizes that there is nothing Dean can truly do to change his actions because it’s impulsive and characteristic of him. Sal is able to reason that this abandoning and ruthless side of Dean is the more natural state of humans, filled with woes and sadness, yet primitive and