2. Can you tell Kerouac loved language? Reflect on where in the novel this love-of-language is most evident and explore its impact on the telling of the story.
You can tell that Kerouac loved language from the first page. "I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split up, and my feeling that everything was dead." (1) He doesn't just explain when he met Dean, but describes the depression he felt in that time, in a way everyone can relate to; everyone's been there.
His descriptions of places are where this love is made most evident. He feels a need to romanticize everywhere he's been; for the reader to get as much out of it as he does. A perfect example would be when he's at a bar in Central City, Colorado, and looking out at the mountains. "In the whole eastern dark wall of the divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in the ravine where we roared; and on the other side of the divide was the great Western slope and the big plateau..." (50) The places he describes become as alive to the reader as they are to Sal.
The main reason his descriptions are so effective is that through the voice of Sal, Kerouac uses language to convey Sal's excitement, and obsession with life. The descriptions show how alive Sal is, that he's imagining this great world in front of him.
2 comments:
I totally agree with you, Kerouac does seem to show his actual love through his expresive writing. Reading this post reminded me of the part of the book where he meet Beatrice in California. His emotions read so clearly through his descriptions of her that one can almost feel his affection through the words.
I wonder if Kerouac actually intended to show his love in his writing, or if it was unintentional.
I too agree with you, that Kerouac's descriptions tell his love for language. To Rachel, I do think that he meant to show that love in his writing. His prose is so full of rich, descriptive language, and I don't think that's something an author would just do unintentionally.
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