Neal Cassady's On The Road

The Beat writer, Neal Cassady, was an enormous motivation and inspiration of many of the writers in New York. Neal Cassady even influenced a fellow writer, Jack Kerouac, to write a book called On the Road, which describes the two authors making road trips all over the country in the quest to gain more knowledge, inner peace, and personal satisfaction. Kerouac states the nature and freeness of what it is like to be on the road and traveling to many different places, sometimes unusual and unfamiliar, in order to grow and attain a greater sense of a better picture of what life is like:

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from

I don't know," she said. "Just wait on tables and try to get along." She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad."

Since Jack Kerouac is such a significant figure in the Beat Generation, the story is somewhat mirroring a part of Kerouac's life and all of the craziness he had done, it also illustrates what a part of the Beat Generation was like as well as showing what kind of life a typical member lived. The different living situations that Ray had in the story made it fairly clear to me the living situations that Kerouac had as well by moving from place to place. Throughout many of his novels, not just in Dharma Bums, Kerouac uses Roman a Clef to stir his writing and represent interesting and significant parts of his

When he was younger, his family had an unfortunate financial hit where his father lost his job, and as a result, the father was quick to blame it on many others including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrats, Communists, and more. But Jack learned to be a hard worker and self-motivated. He was very smart and loved reading and writing so he would actually often skip school to go to the library and read books. He was very athletic too and was a football star. He was a romantic and was interested in many different women. Sadly, there were many instances that he would leave something if he felt as if there was too much authority that was being opposed on him. This fueled his passion for letting people do what they would like and to have a liberation against traditional practices of civilization. For instance, he got accepted to Columbia College but dropped out because he felt as if there was too much authority, then jumped around through a variety of mostly part time jobs. Then he signed up for the Marines but decided not to go because of getting drunk the night before and forgetting about it. Then he joined Columbia college for the second time but dropped out again. To support Jack Kerouac's actions of dropping out of school, not only once, but