so here is the other half to the stupid essay:

Along the way, any drifter is a ride the group takes on. Dean and Sal pick up anyone with a few bucks to spare and a story to tell. The road is long, dark and lonely and it appears the guys have their eyes peeled for all signs of action. We feel from On the Road how lonely and hard it is on the soul, to hitch. In Big Sur Kerouac takes onthe life of hitching. He is Jack Duluoz and thumbs a ride to California’s Pacific Ocean at Big Sur.

The only car that passes that might have given me a ride is going in the wrong direction, down to Sur, and it’s a rattly old car of some kind with a big bearded “South Coast Is the Lonely Coast” folksinger in it waving at me/ Big Sur, pg. 47

We feel defeat along with Jack, we want that car to pick him up, regardless of it being old and rattly. We know he is beat, tired. Imagine standing by the side of the road all day and your only chance speeds right on past. We easily envision it zooming by, a cloud of dust in its wake and still, Jack stands there with determination – he’s getting to where he’s going, no matter what.

Unlike On the Road, the vagabond in Big Sur tries to escape the road going ways to a cabin in Big Sur woods. In this novel, Kerouac writes of his inability to stray far from the vices he is trying to run from and the public which shaped him.

There’s all that, and all my fine thoughts, even unto my ditty written to the sea “I took a pee, into the sea, acid to acid, and me to ye” yet I went crazy inside three weeks. Big Sur, pg. 39

With this, Kerouac foreshadows the eventual dementia which overtakes him upon his three weeks of solitude. He attempts to lay low in Big Sur, mellow out and relax. The mixture of booze and solitude prove to be the deciding factors toward the path of self-destruction for the main character. Within a few days he hallucinates sounds of the Pacific Ocean and sits there babbling to himself, capturing it all in poetry and calls it Sea;

The sea is we-Parle, parle, boom the earth-Aree-shaw, Sho, Shoosh, flut, ravad, tapavada pow, coof, loof, roof,- Oh ya, ya, ya, yo, yair- Shhh-

Evidently through Kerouac’s twenty-three page long poem entitled Sea, he is fully immersed with the sounds of the ocean, this is how he interprets each crash, rise and fall of the waves. This poem can be interpreted in many a way, is he mad or is he simply fond of nature? It becomes obsessive, his mad scrawling and desperate attempt to get it all out. The initial vision of the retreat to Big Sur woods is tainted once Dulouz invites his group of poet friends to the cabin;

I’m sick and tired of all the endless enthusiasms of new young kids trying to know me and pour out all their lives into me so that I’ll jump up and down and say yes yes that’s right, which I can’t do anymore-My reason for coming to Big Sur for the summer being precisely to get away from that sort of thing- Big Sur, pg. 109

Kerouac confesses he realizes the fun ‘n games of the “beats” are over and now that he’s an icon, it’s lost its apeal. It is like he is coming to terms after the long roller-coaster ride of years on the road. There is a bite to these words, a bitterness. Kerouac once was a young kid with endless enthusiasm, eager for acceptance but now he scorns it. He’s been there, done that – he’s coined the “beat generation”. We capture his uncertainty up in the cabin, he hates the kids but can’t stand being alone with no one to drink with, to talk to. What does he want? Has he found “it” yet? Will he?

Using On the Road and Big Sur, Jack Kerouac explored the country from coast to coast many times in the company of friends, alcohol, and poetry. The imagery used in both novels is a showcase for the raw and sometimes emotional talent that was embodied in Kerouac and the Beatniks of the time. In On the Road, Kerouac described the insanities of his friend Dean using descriptive imagery and lively anecdotes; comprable is the way Kerouac uses imagery to describe his own budding insanity. These two classic American novels proves the effective use of imagery is only one hallmark of a great author.