Description Of Jack Kerouac s The Road - 1412 Words

Description of Jack Kerouac Jean Louis Lebris de Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts to immigrant French-Canadian parents Leo and Gabrielle Kerouac. Known to his family as â€Å"Ti Jean†, or Little Jack, he was the youngest of three children. Jack had an older sister, Caroline, and an older brother Gerard, who died of rheumatic fever when Jack was four years old. As an adult, Jack was part of what he called the Beat Generation, which referred to an underground revolution that was quietly happening outside of mainstream politics (Johnson, 2012). Famous for authoring the best-selling book On the Road, which was published in 1957, Jack based his writings on his personal experience of an alcohol and sex fuelled cross-country†¦show more content†¦Jack Kerouac routinely went on what he described as â€Å"binges† that lasted for multiple days (Brinkley, 2004). After a particular binge, occurring after a night of drinking beer, whiskey, and vermouth, he woke up badly beate n and was unable to remember what had happened (Johnson, 2012). According to his own explanation, Jack used alcohol to provide him with the excitement he needed to combat the boredom that he experienced (Johnson, 2012). The effect of Jack’s alcohol dependence directly resulted in his death, which occurred due to cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcoholism (Charters, 1973). Hypersexual behaviour is described as an intense sexual drive that leads to poorly controlled, excessive, and impulsive sexual activity despite negative consequences, such as the risk of emotional and physical harm (Kor, A., Fogel, Y., Reid, R. C., Potenza, M. N., 2013). Although the DSM-IV does not explicitly include criteria for hypersexual behaviour or sexual addiction, the diagnosis of a Sexual Disorder Not Otherwise Specified can be used to account for patterns of hypersexual behaviour (Kor, A., Fogel, Y., Reid, R. C., Potenza, M. N., 2013). Jack’s first sexual experience involved a New York City prostitute, which formed the foundation for a lifetime of impulsiveShow MoreRelated Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums Essay803 Words   |  4 PagesJack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums does not fall too far from a basic description of his life. Kerouac spent the bulk of his writing career riding trains from city to city, meeting people and writing books and poetry. He was among the premier writers of the Beat Generation, a group of primarily urban poets and writers who put the basics of life and their spiritual nuances into poetry with a beat. The book, The Dharma Bums, is a window into the daily structure of theRead More Jack Kerouacs On the Road Essay3102 Words   |  13 PagesJack Kerouacs On the Road Works Cited Not Included   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jack Kerouac is the first to explore the world of the wandering hoboes in his novel, On the Road. He created a world that shows the lives and motivations of this culture he himself named the Beats. Kerouac saw the beats as people who rebel against everything accepted to gain freedom and expression. Although he has been highly criticized for his lack of writing skills, he made a novel that is both realistic and enjoyable to read. He hasRead More Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Kerouac’s On the Road – The River and the Road3035 Words   |  13 PagesTwain’s Huckleberry Finn and Kerouac’s On the Road – The River and the Road One element that separates a good novel from a great novel is its enduring effects on society. A great novel transcends time; it changes and mirrors the consciousness of a civilization. One such novel is Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For the past one hundred and fifteen years, it has remained in print and has been one of the most widely studied texts in high schools and colleges. According to Lionel TrillingRead MoreJack Kerouac s On The Road1793 Words   |  8 PagesPublished in 1957, several years after it was written, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is lauded as one of the most important literary works of the twentieth century. Praised for its role in the counterculture Beat movement that helped shape society today, the novel embraces previously taboo themes like sex, drugs, music, and dissatisfaction with the expectations of ordinary life in early ‘50’s America. According to legend, after years of real life experience of hitchhiking his way b ack and forth acrossRead MoreRomanticism and Modernism as Strange Bedfellows: A Fresh Look at Jack Kerouacs On the Road12240 Words   |  49 Pagesï » ¿ Romanticism and Modernism as Strange Bedfellows: A Fresh Look of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven! O time In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law and statute, took at once The attraction of a Country in Romance! The Prelude—William Wordsworth (Come in under the shadow of this rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at eveningRead MoreEssay on A Comparison of On the Road and Crying of Lot 492247 Words   |  9 Pages In both Jack Kerouac’s, On the Road, and Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 the characters act in a deviant manner outside of social norms. This in turn leads to a deviant sub-cultural group which competes with the institutionalized authorities for power. Deviance in both novels is usually defined as a certain type of behaviour, such as an inebriated professor babbling on in a lecture hall filled with students or a group of teenagers frolicking naked in a city park on a hot and sunny afternoon.Read More On the Roads optimism Essay example2844 Words   |  12 Pages nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;In Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, the narrator, Sal Paradise offers up to us what seems to be a very optimistic view on life. He is forever singing the praises of how wonderful his adventures will be and his high expectations for the future. To Sal, the novel is defined by youthful exuberance and unabashed optimism for the new experiences that he sets out to find. A deeper l ook into the novel, as well as a look at some of the critics who have written on it, revealsRead More Art, Literature And Society From 1955-1970 Essay examples5829 Words   |  24 Pagesstagnation was to pack up and let life lead you down one winding road after another. There was a certain comfort in the unknown. Ambiguity turned survival into a triviality, while one could find the deepest meaning in chance and whimsy. When mere existence doesn’t seem to be guaranteed it’s the little moments of perfection that become one’s focus. No other Beat poet understood that concept as well as Jack Kerouac. quot;Jack Kerouac single handedly created the beat generation. Although Allen GinsbergRead MorePostmodernism in Literature5514 Words   |  23 Pagescontinued experimentations with chance and parody while celebrating the flow of the subconscious. Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism, suggested that automatism and the description of dreams should play a greater role in the creation of literature. He used automatism to create his novel Nadja and used photographs to replace description as a parody of the overly-descriptive novelists he often criticized. Surrealist Rene Magrittes experiments with signification are used as examples by Jacques DerridaRead MoreEudora Welty a Worn Path12166 Words   |  49 Pagesschool—1865—hints that she is probably over eighty at the time the story takes place, but she refuses to die or give up. Phoenixs ritual journey into town symbolizes the continual rising−up of the old woman, like the bird she is allied with. Her description given at the beginning of the story also seems to suggest fire a nd life: a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest