On the Road (Post 1, Question 7)

7. If every book is an author's attempt to answer one of life's questions, what question is McCarthy and/or Kerouac attempting to answer? Explain.

I think that the life question that Kerouac is attempting to answer is, What is the meaning of life? However I'm not sure he answered it. I say this because it would appear that Sal is going through life trying to squeeze it all in and then doing it again. He travels across the country just to find that there's really nothing on the other side that's good enough to have come. It seems as though he only goes places to be on the road and doesn't really care where he's going. He's not sure of what he's supposed to be doing so he just kind of goes with his friends are doing, trying to pick up girls sleeping other people's houses. Getting stuck with a girl he doesn't really want to be with. It always goes back to him being on the road. He's trying to figure out his life but it seems that everywhere he goes isn't what he wants. I think that Kerouac wanted us to think that the meaning of life was the question he was trying to answer but i defenitly don't think he was actually trying to answer it, he just wanted the question in the reader's head. This way, the reader is thinking that Sal's life was not an answer to the question, rather an example. traveling the country and living your life carfully is not the answer to the question, unless you want it to be. He wants us to think, what really is the answer? What I think he is saying is that Sal thought he was setting himself free by traveling to new places, meeting new friends, new girls, taking drugs, listening to different music. But he was trapping himself, always on the road means allways controlled, but what Sal should have done was instead of trying to live a good life he should have just lived it. I think the author was just leaving the question out there, but he wanted us to find the answer.