Paradise Lost

The film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s generation-defining On The Road is coming out this May, bringing up a lot of themes of American identity, wanderlust, and existential fulfillment (or lack thereof). Yet one thing that is often overlooked in readings of On The Road is its problematic portrayal of manhood and womanhood. In spite of the novel’s nostalgic musings that defined the Beat generation, its portrayal of relationships between men and women is jarringly problematic, hierarchical, and abusive. How can we reconcile the book’s timeless theme of soul-searching with the disturbing relationships between and portrayals of men and women in 2012?

When Kerouac and Neal Cassady made their odyssey across America they were trying to break free from the suburban, pre-Kennedy corporate drone that represented the norm for American men. Their characters, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, are in search of independence, ruggedness, and adventure and often refer to themselves as cowboys. As incarnations of the modern cowboy, the two men feel a sense of Western independence in the midst of the 1950s suburban male prototype. They successfully create a new heroic figure that embodied independence and rugged adventure, a stark contrast to the buttoned up mid-century American man. Yet Kerouac’s version of the cowboy has a flawed sense of masculinity that romanticizes and idolizes individualism and selfishness.

The men’s relationships with the women in their lives became complicated because they often represented the social system the men are fighting against and they are characterized in the novel with domesticity, maternity, and loyalty to relationships and responsibilities (see Marylou, Camille, and Old Bull’s wife, Jane). Thus, the women present a threat to Kerouac’s new man of the West and are repeatedly abandoned and are physically and emotionally abused. Additionally, women’s need for new gender roles in the 1950s is overlooked in the novel, and they are neglected the opportunity for their equivalent of a cowboy ethic.

In an attempt to restore the lost masculinity from the American West in 1950s America, Kerouac’s men tragically become selfish and self-destructive and simultaneously subjugate the women in their lives because of their association with this bourgeois domestic system.

In 2012, how should we read On The Road and its revival in film? There are still problematic social expectations for both genders today, and controversy about sexuality are frequently in the news, but American culture has come a long way since the novel was published. Is it possible to read the more positive themes of self-discovery, liberation from The Man, and adventure in the upcoming film without getting prescribed negative, dated themes of manhood and womanhood in our historical moment? Can we separate the idyllic nostalgia for wanderlust from the reality?