“Momentous Encounters: Reading Crossroads in Kerouac’s On the Road”
Résumé
This paper examines the idea of crossroads in Kerouac’s road novel On the Road. On the one hand, as criss-crossing the American landscape is one of the major drive of this novel, the paper analyses the function of crossroads, how these interrupt the pace and rhythm the author wants to impart the novel. Moreover, as On the Road’s restless protagonist Sal is searching for a place within the nation and a definition of himself, it looks into how do crossroads contribute to this exploration. On the other hand, focus is placed on three major cities (New York, Denver, San Francisco) functioning as crossroads, as places of cultural and artistic contacts in the birth and development of the Beat Generation. The paper concludes on the extent to which the novel is emblematic of a generation at a crossroad, a motley generation of writers and artists whose meetings were momentous as described in the novel.