On the Road and Saint Maybe, by Jack Kerouac and Anne Tyler Essay Example For Students

On the Road and Saint Maybe, by Jack Kerouac and Anne Tyler Essay Wikipedia encyclopedia suggests the word experience may refer somewhat ambiguously both to mentally unprocessed immediately-perceived events as well as to the purported wisdom gained in subsequent reflection on those events or interpretation of them. Most wisdom-experience accumulates over a period of time, though one can also experience and gain general wisdom-experience from a single specific momentary event. In novels On the Road and Saint Maybe, by Jack Kerouac and Anne Tyler, the authors stress upon life as a set of experiences and how these builds a person. Utterly and completely carefree are the characters, blowing and twisting on the maelstrom of their whims, each lunging twinge of a mental process reflected in miles. A laughing blue sky above waiting to swallow one alive, a gleefully roaring engine burning hungrily in front, the road and its devils grinning wickedly below, Jack Kerouacs characters go flying off randomly along the twisted contours of their lives in his autobiographical epic On the Road. In Part I, Chapter 11, when Paradise abandons his screenplay in order to find a job,shadow of disappointment crosses Remi Boncoeurs face; even though no words are spoken at this point, the look on poor Remis face is quite enough to form a rhetorical appeal. The look conveys the sentiments of the central characters of the book that trivialities such as everyday jobs should be cast aside in favor of following ones dream. For one, this is an appeal from character; Remi, crestfallen that Sal has turned his back on his dream, is a person who has no qualms about stealing couches, or food, or stripping a ghost ship of its valuables. In this way, his desire to live the moment is connected with his questionable moralsa problem somewhat relieved when his general goodness is illustrated by having him try to organize an evening out in order to put his father at ease. When Remi wants something, he takes it, but hes a decent, big-hearted person overallalmost childlike. It should be observed that he has the amorality of a little kid. Therefore, this appeal from character should be seen as a cry for living ones dream an almost naive way of thinking of things, seen from the childlike eyes of Remi Boncoeur. Second, this passage contains an appeal to emotion. Remis facial expression intends to prod that part of Sal, and the reader, that would like to continually live on and for the moment, chasing dreams, and never for moments surrender to the mundane. Time and again, the characters shift across the blazing heartland of America, yearning for release, for wonder. They live in the thrall of today and now. Of course, there are exceptions, moments where the restless lusting encounters resistance. In Part I, Chapter 13, page 96, at the time when he is living with Terry, there is a passage wherein Sal describes picking cotton, and he says I thought I had found my lifes work. He and Terry and her boy live together, and Sal temporarily forgets his friends and his wanderlust. Short-lived though this period might be, Sal becomes a man of the earth and returns to the simple life. Eventually, though, he tells Terry that he has to leave and is on the road again. Not long after, though, he settles down with his aunt for an extended period of time. He actually spends a year living the normal life. All it takes is Dean roaring up in a beat-up Hudson to send him back in full force to the road. For most of the rest of the novel, he and his ever-shifting company of friends roam ceaselessly around the continent. In the first chapter of Part three, on page 179, Sal moves to Denver, where he thinks of living the normal lifeI saw myself in Middle America, a patriarch. I was lonesome. Nobody was thereà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ This last sentence is the key, of course. Separated from his friends, most particularly Dean, Sal gives in to the stereotypical American mindset. But when he finds Dean again, and Camille kicks them both out, they embark on another series of excursions, the only binding elements being the road and the mislaid faith in reaching Italy. The pivotal time in the course of their relationship, this is when Dean and Sal make their friendship concrete. Though they never reach Italy, they travel and party and live for the moment, and have seemingly little regret when it is over. Highly emotional scene EssayIan wishes that causing somebodys suicide was something for which one could go to prison, for at least then he would have an identifiable way of paying for what he had done. As it is, he simply wants to confess what he has done. He recognizes the importance of confession, both to unburden his own conscience and to test his reading of the situation with others. But Ian initially finds it difficult to do so, primarily because his family and girlfriend do not want to bear the burden of bad news. Or, more strongly put, they might not want to face the truth of what Ian has done. He seeks out religion to help him deal with his guilt but it repels him with its shallow and sterile faÃÆ' §ade of formality. But one day he wanders into a storefront church intriguingly called The Church of the Second Chance. For Ian, the driving force of life is the Church of the Second Chance, which shows him a way to channel his guilt over complicity in the family tragedy. This churchs main doctrine is that total forgiveness will come when one offers concrete, practical reparation for the committed offense. Christ makes up for the difference between the maximum reparation sacrifice one can offer and the damage caused by the sinful behavior. God wants to know how far youll go to undo the harm youve done pg. 123, the Reverend tells Ian. Its the religion of atonement and complete forgivenessà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Its the religion of the Second Chance pg. 124. And in Ians case, this means a beginning of a new life. He steps away from his education and becomes an apprentice, but he does so hoping to find an insular world of inanimate objects. Such a desire signals an intensified withdrawal from the vagaries of human communication and the vulnerability of human relationships. Ian participates fully in the Churchs program of Good Works, and he takes full responsibility for raising the three children. Unfortunately, Ian seems to think he ought to do these things in order to earn forgiveness. After rightly insisting to his father that Christian life requires a commitment of ones entire being, Ian mistakenly draws the wrong conclusion. The changes in his life, he tells his father, are something I have to do for myself, to be forgiven pg 127. Rather than seeing a changed way of life as a consequence of Gods forgiveness, Ian sees forgiveness as something one has to earn through an extensive penance. In the process, Ian becomes very cautious in his life. He eventually does discover some grace precisely through the ordinariness of his life. He recognizes that You could never call it a penance, to have to take care of these three. They were all that gave his life color, and energy, and well, life. Even more, Ian discovers a sense of new life through his encounter with, and eventual marriage to, Ritaa woman hired to unclutter the Bedloe house. As Alexander Pope once said, a man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is by saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. It is important that a person learns from their mistakes and take out a valuable lesson learned through their decisions and experiences, as life is a constant journey full of such experiences. The world does not stop for anyones sake; it simply keeps going and does not put into consideration that the day did not go accordingly to plan, and to understand this is and move on is what builds character. In the novels On the Road and Saint Maybe, Kerouac and Tyler make this notion visible to the readers.