In praise of Jack Kerouac and On the Road

 

As the director of the movie On the Road, you are about to present Jack Kerouac, his literary achievements and an excerpt from the novel for a making-of  documentary.

TASK: Complete the script below with your knowledge of the novel and its author so far. 

 

I wanted to adapt On the Road ,originally published (date) , to the screen because the novel is a precursor of the counterculture movement of the 1960s. It's a tale of a circle of friends who crisscross America and buck conformity as they thirst for experience. The story being based on Kerouac's own circle of friends and hipsters, On the Road can be considered as an (genre) . Jack Kerouac was hailed as the voice of the (movement) , an anti-conformist movement of the (years) . The term refers to many ideas: the fact of being beaten, the rhythmic pattern in music, the beat of the heart. 

What characterizes the most Kerouac's writing is (style) . Kerouac wrote like a jazz musician with spontaneous improvisation. He wrote in the (narrative mode) : a narrative mode which attempts to capture accuracy by instant-to-instant recording of what is flashing through your mind. That's the reason why he typed the entire draft of his novel on (method) . 

On the movie poster, the road symbolises escape from  and the rearview mirror the life they're leaving behind them (with responsibilities). In this scene, they're heading to . The atmosphere in the car is hysterical. If the characters think New York is cold and , New Orleans seems more intriguing but we understand that they will probably not stay long there which shows that the characters are restless and always on the move. Many stylistic devices are used to convey their feelings: exclamations, capital letters, repetitions, alliteration, hyperbolic sentences... This excerpt perfectly illustrates the spirit of the Beat Generation because it conveys the excitement of the moment, the exacerbetion of the senses and the immediacy of experience.