One of the first American ideals was that of the rugged individualist: the hero-explorer, in the tradition of Lewis, Clark and Davy Crockett, as well as cowboys. America, especially the western part, was an exciting new frontier to explore. However, once most of the continent was explored and industrialization created large urban and suburban areas where people could spend their entire human lives, much of the desire to explore was lost. Traveling was not necessary to see magazines and the radio made it possible. However, after the Great Depression and especially after the Second World War, a new generation felt the need to see America, to seek the truth. It was disillusioned and overwhelmed the nation, evidenced, for example, by the film noir style of the late 1940s, symbolized by Jack Kerouac freeing himself from this anxiety, freeing himself from the "feeling that everything was dead". (1) He created an ideal that future generations of young people would follow in astonishing numbers. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Between 1946 and 1952, Kerouac crisscrossed the United States with his friend Neal Cassady; the journey is documented (only lightly fictionalized) in his book On the Road, published in 1957. Kerouac (Sal Paradise in the book) was actually following Cassady (Dean Moriarty), a fact that is often overlooked. A big part of the reason Sal followed Dean was that Sal was a writer looking for new experiences. Dean, to Sal, was the embodiment of the American dream: as we rode the bus through the strange phosphorescent void of the Lincoln Tunnel we leaned on each other, wagging our fingers, shouting and talking excitedly, and I was starting to get the mania. like Dean. He was simply a young man tremendously enthusiastic about life...(4)Sal also links Dean directly to a distinctly old Western ideal by describing him as "a young Gene Autry, a sideburned hero of the snowy West." (2) Dean is the antithesis of the pretentious intellectual culture of New York in which Sal feels out of place. Maybe he's a shady character given his past, but that matters little to Sal. Dean leaves for Denver and Sal leaves several months later to join him in the West. Sal has some difficulty getting there, but it is on the journey, exploring, that he will discover his inner security and joy. At the end of his first trip alone he is ecstatic: he meets exciting characters, sees changes in the scenery; almost all the words he uses seem to be superlatives. However, there are hints in On the Road that this new kind of idealism is not perfect; the West is not an unlimited paradise. In his poem "Denver Doldrums", Sal's friend Carlo Marx describes the Rocky Mountains as "papier-mâché", (47) meaning that they could all collapse at any moment. “The whole universe was crazy, cross-eyed and extremely strange,” Marx says. Sal soon returns to the East, which he describes as "brown and holy", compared to his new idea of ​​the West as "white as a clothesline and empty-headed". (79) Must keep moving; there is no end. By the novel's conclusion, Sal has found love, as well as trust, but he is still on the move, not yet completely satisfied. Sal has also come to understand that he cannot simply follow Dean, as Dean is more lost now than Sal was at the beginning of the novel. How Kerouac "chased" Neal Cassady when he was disillusioned with the world around him, a generation later. , young people began to "chase" Kerouac. On the Road was published in 1957, when the American consciousness was once again beginning to change, and..