1.2 The “Beat Generation”

In American literature history of the 20th century, The “Beat Generation” becomes one of the counterculture groups who has most praises and blames for its deviant and eccentric character. In the United States, after the World War II in the 1950s, people’s sensitivity becomes dull and weak. With a strong spirit of rebellion and contempt of liberalism and the scorn to the middle-class’s stiff and conservative lifestyle, the “Beat Generation” tries to use literature and some other new vision to find convincing value and try to help people establish an ideal society with peace and justice. They believe that all this can be achieved through literary works. The main part of the “Beat Generation” is young white men who have good education. They come together based on the same spirit which is against the traditional lifestyle. The core writers of the “Beat Generation” are Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. All of them make a serious attack on that time that depresses the whole generation’s spirit in their master works including On the Road, Howling and Naked Lunch. It can be said that the “Beat Generation” has gone beyond literature and cultural boundaries and it has become the synonymous with a spirit and way of life. There is a strong idealistic utopia under the seemingly decadent appearance. However, their actions and works have impulsion from the passion of youth. They speak out the real howl about faith in spiritual level by taking drugs, having sex and listening to jazz, in order to reflect the contradiction and pain in their heart. 

The definition of the “Beat”, Kerouac himself has his own explanation: “Beat does not mean fatigue or exhaustion and so on, just like the word ‘beato’ in Italian, it means angel and happy; it is a beatific state, just like St. Francis, means to love life, to frank to anyone.” Therefore, in the novel On the Road, Kerouac creates a group of “Beat Generation” who do not collapse in the spirit. 

2. Literature Review

2.1 Overseas Research Review

In the late 1980s, the United States started to study a large number of literary works about the “Beat Generation” including On the Road. The rise of the studying boom has a direct relationship with more first-handed data been published, including letters, interview records and manuscripts. One the most representative was edited by Ann Charters Selected Letters. He collected the letters between Kerouac and his friends, families and editors in this book. This book has become the important historical data source to know Kerouac’s view on creating literary works and his life. In addition, Charters also wrote the A Biography of works by Kerouac and other books published related to the research on Kerouac, which provided a wealth of reference for the later research on Kerouac. Hayes’s Conversation with Jack Kerouac has played the same role as well. The book of questions and answers from 1958 to 1969 between media and Kerouac, involved the philosophy of life, the origin of the “Beat Generation”, and the concept of writing and creating of On the Road.

In the research of On the Road, the researchers mainly focused on its way of writing—the spontaneous writing, like Hipkiss’s Jack Kerouac, Prophet of the New Romanticism and Weinreich’s Kerouac’s Spontaneous: a Study of the Fiction. The research also studied the guiding significance to the “Beat Sport” in On the Road combining with the time background. However, which was studied most was the theme of impact to traditional culture and chasing for inpidual emancipation of American in On the Road.

Holladay and Holton wrote a book called What’s Your Road, man?: Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The book has covered all the research results including all aspects like creation, race and literary theme and has been regarded as the “panorama”.