On the Road
(Jack Kerouac)

Friendship

Friendship is an overriding theme in this novel because it is the basis. Sal sees Dean not only as his best friend, but as his idol. He wants to be just like Dean and is extremely intrigued at the way Dean lives his life and how he views it.

As Sal grows as a person and Dean stays the same, the dynamic of their friendship changes and almost falters. Dean is friends with people based on what he can learn from them, like his relationship with Carlo Marx, which he is involved in because he values his mind and what he can learn from him.

Restlessness

Restlessness is a common feature in the beat generation. Sal and Dean are young people who do not know what they want in life, do not know how to get it, and set out on a journey to find it by having fun, gaining life experience, and expanding their minds.

Sal and Dean constantly feel the need to keep moving to find what they are looking for, though no matter how much they keep moving they cannot seem to find a happy ending. The characters constantly move through relationships to find a place they are happy but the movement is futile.

Sadness

Sadness is a trait that is often found in the beat generation. Sal is the saddest character because he cannot find happiness. He finds that whenever he is alone he is sad, but he is also sad when he is in a relationship. He finds that the only time he is happy is when he is involved in intellectual conversation with someone, and he finds that most of his relationships with women are nothing more than physical. Most male/female relationships throughout the novel are tied to sadness in a way, as is the music of the period which was mostly jazz blues.

Sex

Sex is a prominent theme in this novel, particularly for the character of Dean Moriarty. Dean has sexual relationships with various women whom he ends up falling in love with. For Dean, lust and love are mutually inclusive concepts he feels that when he has a powerful sexually relationship with a woman, he loves her and must then marry her.

Dean falls in love as quickly as he falls out of it which explains his string of failed marriages and children that he has left behind. Sal feels exactly the opposite, where he would like a relationship with a woman that is more intellectual than sexual.

Substance Abuse

Drugs and alcohol drive most of the actions throughout the novel. The characters often put their highest priority on getting high rather than eating. In the beat generation, drug use was becoming more prevalent than ever before and to these characters it was no exception.

Drugs and alcohol are a point of bonding and open the door to the intellectual and personal discussions that the men crave. Without these substances, many of the relationships that occur in the novel would make no sense, or never happen at all. The dreams and goals that Sal has when he is high or drunk are those of Dean when he is sober, showing again how Sal idolizes Dean.

Religion and Spirituality

Throughout the novel, there are many references to spiritualism and God. According to Dean, there is nothing holier than sex and certain musicians are God to him because of their sense of time. In Sal’s mind, there is nothing holier than a spiritual and intellectual connection with a women, rather than sex.

The characters often have dreams that are based on religious figures or have appearances of God. The characters often have hallucinations when they are high that leads them to question religion and spirituality and wonder what it all means to them in the scheme of things.

Intelligence

The need for intellectual conversation and the expression of knowledge and wisdom is particularly beneficial to the characters in the novel, and the basis for their friendship with one another. The characters believe that one should learn through life experiences, rather than through books.

Drug abuse seems to go hand in hand with wisdom, as Bull Lee who is arguably the wisest character is a drug addict. The characters become friends with one another because of their thirst for knowledge and desire to learn; Sal wishes to learn to be more like Dean, slightly crazy, and Dean wishes to become more intellectual.

Madness

Dean is utterly mad, as is demonstrated often throughout the novel and is one of his most endearing traits. Madness is the quality that attracts Sal to Dean, and the quality that Sal most wishes he possessed.

Dean’s madness is attributed to drugs, alcohol, jazz music, failed relationships, religion, and a constant thirst for knowledge. Sal admires Dean’s madness, but Dean believes that Sal is a little mad too, only on a different level, and the reason they can be friends is because they both wish to learn from each other’s madness.

Culture

During the beat generation, culture and art are hugely important concepts and a driving force within this novel. Sal spends time berating those who he sees as artsy, never realizing that he and his friends may be seen as artsy to others.

Music is indispensable to the characters and to the culture of the time period and is often seen as a religious experience. The thirst for knowledge, and the fact that some of the characters are, or will become, beat writers and poets, makes them all artsy whether they wish to be or not. The characters drink in the culture of the period and actively participate in it with a desire to soak in as much as possible.

Time

Time is an increasingly prominent concept to the characters, especially to Dean. As time goes by and the characters are not finding what they are looking for, or figuring out who they are, they begin to freak out that they are running out of time. They begin to fear that death is closing in on them, and they are going to die without accomplishing anything.

The term “beat generation” could also mean to beat time. Dean feels as though only Gods can truly know and understand time, and his main goal in life is to reach this height of wisdom and knowledge.