Jack Kerouac and the Road Trip Narrative

The road trip narrative is something we’ve all read at some point or another. People write blogs, books, and songs solely devoted to the feeling of being out on the open road. When done right the road trip narrative is a combination of travel, adventure, and bildungsroman. People relate to these stories because they are, in essence, stories about freedom and self-discovery. We’d all like to put ourselves in the shoes of the great explorers and strike our own path. But is that how these road trips actually are?

From my memories, road trips were hot, sweaty, brother-shoving-you-in-the-back-seat affairs with lots of fast food and few epiphanies. They were enjoyable, yes, but I always liked the destination (and the destination’s indoor pool) more than the trip itself. Have I been going about road trips all wrong? Or are road trip narratives really just an elaborate metaphor, the ideal of freedom and adventure rather than the truth?

I don’t know for sure, but perhaps this is just the nature of stories in general. They are exaggerations of the truth, emotions at their most heightened, most exciting, most critical. After all, that’s why I read in the first place, for the escapism and adventure of it. Why do you read?

I’m going to be on a road trip for the next week, so hopefully I’ll be able to find out for myself: Route 66 all the way from Illinois to California. Until then I will leave you with some of my favorite Jack Kerouac quotes from On the Road.

“They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!””

"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 home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds."

"What's your road, man?--holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow."