Review article
TRAVELLING AS A SEARCH FOR SENSE
Mirna Brkić
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mostar
Abstract
Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road (1957) is the most important work of
art produced by a group of authors known as beat generation. The protagonists
of Kerouac’s novel, two friends Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise,
travel around America just for the sake of travel, showing to the readers
the country’s good and bad sides. Beat generation and Dean, as a personification
of mysticism of that generation, are opposed to hypocrisy, materialism
and consumerism of American society. The novel in its essence is a
drama of existence, a pursuit of primeval and authentic. This example of
modern American on the road picaresque had a significant impact on the
contemporary Croatian writers, primarily Šoljan and his novels Traitors,
A Brief Excursion and The Second Men on the Moon. The protagonists
of Šoljan’s novels are young, lethargic, pessimistic people whose travels,
just as in Kerouac’s novel, turn into pursuit of meaningful and authentic
life deprived of pressure on conformism and submission to the rules of
establishment.
Keywords
Jack Kerouac; On the Road; American on the road picaresque; beat generation; Antun Šoljan; Traitors; A Brief Excursion; The Second Men on the Moon; impacts; travel as a pursuit of meaningful and authentic life; resistance to conformism.
Hrčak ID:
230062
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2008.
Visits: 1.911 *