John Kerouac, as well as all the Beats, by today’s standards would probably be labelled as just shy of crazy. He would go out and take long winded trips across the country with his friend Neal Cassady in search of girls and new adventures. He would spend days at a time sitting in front of his typewriter, writing every detail he could possibly think of while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. He would live life with the “YOLO” mindset, as did most of the Beat Generation boys. Out of all the readings we have been focusing on, Kerouac’s bit was the one that stood out the most to me as did Norman Mailer’s.
Kerouac and Cassady’s road trip described in Off the Road reminds me of the trip that Chris McCandless took in the 1990s. Obsessed with the thought of escaping conformity, he donated most of his college money and set out to travel with nothing more than what he wore and a few things in his backpack. McCandless was a typical all-American boy who never showed signs of wanting to escape the “burdens” of living a normal life, but something changed in him that
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He gave some wise words about how it seemed that it did not matter what our personalities or our opinions where, it only mattered how many teeth or much hair we had; we were just a statistic to put in a book and would never be known as anything more (Mailer 583). When I think about this statement he made, I get a little depressed. It makes me realize that how insignificant I feel like my life up to this point and probably for the rest of my life will be in comparison to eternity. I more than likely will not end world peace, nor will I discover the cure for cancer. I will more than likely live just like everyone else with my typical office job and my typical family of a husband and children. When said like that, I can see why the Beats wanted something exciting to change the ways of the