Hum (Jan 2008)
TRAVELLING AS A SEARCH FOR SENSE
Abstract
Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road (1957) is the most important work of art produced by a group of authors known as beat generation. The protagonists of Kerouac’s novel, two friends Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise, travel around America just for the sake of travel, showing to the readers the country’s good and bad sides. Beat generation and Dean, as a personification of mysticism of that generation, are opposed to hypocrisy, materialism and consumerism of American society. The novel in its essence is a drama of existence, a pursuit of primeval and authentic. This example of modern American on the road picaresque had a significant impact on the contemporary Croatian writers, primarily Šoljan and his novels Traitors, A Brief Excursion and The Second Men on the Moon. The protagonists of Šoljan’s novels are young, lethargic, pessimistic people whose travels, just as in Kerouac’s novel, turn into pursuit of meaningful and authentic life deprived of pressure on conformism and submission to the rules of establishment.
