The Beat Generation of the post-war 1950s is the Lost Generation of disillusioned rebellious young men looking for freedom and self-expression. It is a religious generation on a spiritual quest back and forth in the lands of America. A relatively small movement in terms of published literature, the Beatnik generation's literary sphere was dominated by three leading figures: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. The writings of these figures generally focused on the major themes of the generation itself, advocating a modern bohemian hedonism far exceeding that of any other movement of the 20th century.The most prominent and famous writer of this Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac, portrays his journeys through America in his autobiographical novel On the Road.

In the book, Sal Paradise, the literary equivalent of Jack Kerouac, is a writer outsider in the search of a place under the sun. He is bored, disillusioned, and unhappy. Upon meeting his hero, Dean Moriarty, Paradise goes on a journey through the lands of America and Mexico, experimenting with drugs, sex, and alcohol, hitchhiking, stealing, sleeping under the sun, starving, yet engaging in exuberant and memorable experiences. Both friends rebel against the conformist American dream and go on the road to break with conventions and rules, with heightened expectations of what life should be and what life could actually offer. As they follow through their travels, the way they interact or exist in the different places or towns they visit changes, as their choices affects them as positively as negatively. In this book analysis, after defining the meaning of the Beatnik Generation and shedding more light on their stands and opinions, we are going to analyse the variant changes of space in the book, the way the characters interact with the city, the choises they make, and generally the power of certain sceneries and the meaning behind them.

The Beat Generation is a media term assigned to post-WWII writers who came to popularity in the 1950s, continuing into the early 1960s. Any stereotype you have heard about the Beatniks are likely true. It was a vibrant culture of experimentation. It was a culture that advocated sexual freedom, drug use, an interest in Eastern culture (likely due to the commonality of opium), a common hatred of materialism, and an overall means of self-expression that shocked and overwhelmed those not part of the nonconformist Beatnik generation.
Having began with Bebop in the 40's, Jazz music also took over the New York City underground with its energetic, unstructured, and passionate sounds. Jazz artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Miles Davis were idolized by the Beatniks. As a result we can notice some major similarities between Jack Kerouac’s writing and jazz music, such as improvisation and other jazz-like techniques. The Beatniks moved from New York City to San Francisco, where they were credited with being strongly associated with the San Francisco Renaissance.
The group of young progressive students were frequently arrested for crimes involving theft and sale of narcotics and at one point or another, each of them were considered psychotic, although many would argue they were merely eccentric and overly passionate. Perhaps the most notoriously reputable was Neal Cassady, whose writing, speaking, and rapping style inspired Kerouac's On the Road.

When it comes this particular book, scenery plays a extremely important role: from the beginning the swift change of scenery puts us in this quickly evolving story. Jumping from bus to bus, train to train, city to city, the main characters in this books a vastly exposed and affected by their surroundings; First of all, while reading , we notice that the book can be divided in two situations, the one when our characters decide to be on the move and start travelling, and the second one being when they decide to settle somewhere and enjoy their stay sometimes for a long period of time.

When travelling, the scenery takes this always evolving shape, hours go by quickly, crumbled in the back of a truck, while hitchhiking, while jumping illegally on trains, etc. Those scenes mainly describe the hunt of the American dream, where not only bums or beatniks, but everyone in America was trying for a better life. When jumping trains Sal realises that he is not the only one, something that gives him courage and pushes him to go forward. Although in the beginning Sal was scared and uncertain of his future, while travelling Sal realises that he is not the only one hoping for a better life. The road, to Sal, is "pure" and straightforward as nothing else is in his life. This desperate desire to move is the one thing that binds Sal and Dean closer than anyone else in the novel: Even Carlo Marx can't understand what they're doing. In a way, the road is the only place Sal and Dean belong.
The rainy night is also rather important scenery when it comes to this book; Kerouac has used this metaphor in other novels. It would seem to symbolize the motion of time in America It is most clearly seen when Sal visits rivers-first the Hudson, most notably the Mississippi, and then the river that takes up the final paragraph of the novel.
Kerouac compares the cycle of water, from rain, to river, to sea, to evaporation and then all over again, to the movement of time and culture. The water’s movement is a metaphor for life and history.

All those scenes give also away a sense of adventure and exploration in two main ways. First, there is the story of exploration. For Sal, the country and towns that lie before him represent new adventures. Through his first journey, Sal understands himself to be one in the long line of explorers and settlers who went West to find a new life. In the Denver mining town we recognize an air of the Old West, a time of cowboys and dangerous frontiers. As he picks cotton with other migrant farm workers, he imagines himself to be a part of that culture and those who farmed and worked civilization into being in the American West. The scenery here is making Sal a better man, with greater understanding of his own society, and sometimes in a much sadder tone. In this way, the novel comments on and criticizes its times. Just a year before the book was published, in 1956, President Eisenhower had signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which formally began the construction of the Interstate Highway System. A plan for the system had been in the works since 1921, and this was just one of many signs that America was taming its West. Sal realizes through the novel that though modernity and technology are bringing greater access to transportation and to places in the West, there are fewer and fewer places to be discovered. Sal confronts this reality as he visits the Wild West Festival in Cheyenne, a tourist attraction that can only simulate the real Wild West. The mining town outside of Denver has also ceased to be a true part of the West, being now a part of tourist culture. Sal and Dean also feel a sadness for the Indian cultures of the mountains of Mexico, for they realize that the coming of a highway means the destruction of their culture. By the end of the novel, the reader begins to understand thought this sometimes decayed West and the images that we come across, that any road that leads to the American West brings with it the potential destruction of culture even as it gives freedom to the traveller or tourist.

Although always travelling, Sal, alone or with his friend, mainly Dean, would find a city to settle down for a while. There, the scenery changes completely; these concrete jungles bring out a different side of the protagonists’ characters;

In Denver, Dean and Sal begin to try to satisfy whatever urge or lust comes into his mind. As Sal arrives we come across a very specific scene that explains exactly that; We see Sal drinking heavily at a bar, talking to stranger, flirting with young girls, being much more opened than during his trip there; he begins to drinking heavily, and “not carrying that he did”. Dean's lust is also awaked during their stay in Denver, where he had arrived before Sal; He has many mistresses, and even starts to stalk a young neighbour. Sal expresses the fact that maybe he belongs to the Road. It is well shown here that Sal has started to understand his own demons, awakened by the beat of the city.

In Detroit, Sal comes to face his own identity. Broke and tired at the movie theatre, Sal's dreams and images of Hollywood play all night, beginning to merge and form together in his consciousness. It is in the movie theatre where Sal notices the most "beat" of all the characters in the novel, in a sense-the homeless and destitute of Detroit-and the juxtaposition of the false reality of Hollywood, the hollywoodization of America and the true reality of this underbelly of America contrast sharply. Sal begins to identify most closely with the "garbage" he sees around him. He feels completely rejected by society and no better than the trash that litters the theatre. Unlike the New York intellectual crowd that characterized "beat" at the beginning of the novel, this scene most fully identifies what Sal (and thus Kerouac, it seems) has come to view as the true "beat" culture of America.

We also come to understand that the life that Sal and Dean want to live is one that rejects all notions of authority and rule. Dean has little regard for the law and conventions of society. Authority is seen in the novel through the pleadings of the maternal characters for Dean and Sal to settle down and fulfill their responsibilities, and it is most clearly understood in the various run-ins that the group of Beats has with law enforcement. Anarchy in the individual eventually confronts the authority of society.
On every journey, Sal and Dean are confronted with the realities of law enforcement and the laws that they have broken throught different sceneries. This is vividly seen in a stop in Washington on the day of Truman's re-election inauguration. As they watch the festivities, a parade of military vehicles rolls down Pennsylvania Avenue. This particular scene wanted to put face to face two contradicting point of view in America that time: From one side, we had a government that had come victorious from the war, stronger and with a more powerful presence, both inside its borders and outside of them (the parade is a clear metaphor for military power), and on the other side we have this ”beat generation”, a group of intellectuals opposing social and political prejudices and stereotypes. For Dean and Sal this display is nothing they want to be a part of. They are stopped and harassed by Washington police when they speed and drive on the wrong side of the road. Both sceneries are ideal to demonstrate the differences between the two groups, as well as understand better the reasons why this generation needs to flee; it is chased out by its same society. The authorities of the novel clearly disapprove of the lifestyle that these young hipsters are leading. Others can tell, simply from their looks, that these people are rejecting the authority of the nation and the pressures to conform.

During their stay in Gregoria, their experience in the whorehouse provides Sal and Dean with one of their most amoral moments in the novel. During the day they consume massive amounts of alcohol and drugs, and the constraints of conventional society seem to no longer enter into their decisions at all. They have sex with young girls from different cultures and believe that this is what a pure culture can offer, the pure moment of experience. The scenery here affects the heroes in a negatively liberating way; he see Dean and Sal letting themselves taken by their almost animalistic feelings, they need to break free for the chain of society, therefore letting themselves act above morality or ethics. Only a brief moment or two of reality comes into Sal's mind when he sees the fifteen-year-old black girl. When she is sweeping the floor, he begins to understand her poverty and some of the realities of her life. The scenery here not only awakens primal desires in our characters minds, but also takes a moment to remind them orf reality, wish cannot be escaped, no matter where.

Mexico City appears to be of our heroes a "beatnik" city, and Sal characterises it “the magic South” and the reader can imagine the same kinds of activities and adventures that have characterized the rest of the novel. This final adventure might bring some closure and final understanding to Sal. Instead, Sal becomes sick with dysentery, Dean leaves, and the rest of the stay in Mexico receives no mention.

The book closes with one of the most interesting sceneries in its entirety: Sal contemplating the passage of time on a river in New Jersey. It would seem to symbolize the motion of time in America. It is most clearly seen when Sal visits rivers-first the Hudson, most notably the Mississippi, and then the river that takes up the final paragraph of the novel. Kerouac uses this scenery to compares the cycle of water, from rain, to river, to sea, to evaporation and then all over again, to the movement of time and culture. The water’s movement is a metaphor for life and history.

In conclusion we can deduce that “On the Road” is fast paced book, with almost an confusing speed when in comes to jumping from one place to the other, from a scenery to another. And while zigzagging thought the U.S.A., our character seem sometimes to be as lost and as confused as we are. While chasing their, and believing that unity between them can overcome many things, they get sometimes dragged by the tides of their society, indulge its sinful and amoral side, and get lost in search of their own personal heaven