On The Road, post 2

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.

I definitely thing Kerouac loved language, and I think On The Road as a whole, is the perfect example of that. His writing style is very lyrical, and he has an amazing ability to put together words in the strangest ways, to create the best possible descriptions of characters, feelings and situations. "At lilac evening" (179), and "a little blond child of the rainbow" (143) are only two out of hundreds of examples of this ability. Though this entire book is filled with lovely language, I think every time he goes into a paragraph about one of Dean's in depth conversations about life - these usually happen while they're driving across the country - his writing gets on a level that you just get lost in. He uses more and more unique words, and it gave me a better sense of how important these conversations are to Sal and Dean. "...the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives." (209) The two of them become so immersed in their own thoughts, and each other's thoughts, and I think their ability to connect is a huge part of this story. I'd like to think I have a pretty descent vocabulary, but Kerouac forced me to look up the meaning of more than one obscure word throughout the course of this novel, and I think that's another good example of his obvious love of language. He wanted to make sure that he used the exact right word and after being forced to look some of them up, I truly believe no other word could have been used in these sentences. After finishing this book, I've found a new writer I love, and another writing style to help me discover things about my own writing