Blog 5- Human Geography in Kerouac's On The Road and Mexican Fellhaven

 In Jack Kerouac's novel, "On The Road," mobility plays a massive part in the main characters' behavior. It seems as if they use mobility as a way to escape responsibility and normality, because if they keep moving, then they will never be grounded to a single task.

  Tim Cresswell, a human geographer, argues that “Kerouac used mobility, alongside other themes, to express resistance to established norms in the culture of the United States during the nineteen fifties.”(Cresswell 1) This is absolutely clear in Jack Kerouac's novel, as the main character continues to explore the United States with no goal in mind.

  Examples of this mobility are present in Jack Kerouac's novel constantly, because it is the main theme of the entire story. The characters never stop moving, and it is plausible that they do this to escape the social norms and responsibilities of American life. This is seen in the quote,

“I spun around till I was dizzy; I thought I'd fall down as in a dream, clear off the precipice. Oh
where is the girl I love? I thought, and looked everywhere, as I had looked everywhere in the little
world below. And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent;
somewhere far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam.
There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and
emptyheaded-at least that's what I thought then.“ (Kerouac 51)

  It is blatant that Kerouac is trying to picture that the character is escaping something. This is why Tim Cresswell, the human geographer from earlier, theorizes that the mobility in Kerouac's story is a way to run from the human responsibilities of nineteen fifties America.

  There are more interesting passages in the story, which suggest that the characters are tiring of running. For example,

“It was time for us to move on. We took a bus to Detroit, Our money was now running quite low. We
lugged our wretched baggage through the station. By now Dean's thumb bandage was almost as
black as coal and all unrolled. We were both as miserable-looking as anybody could be after all the
things we'd done. Exhausted, Dean fell asleep in the bus that roared across the state of Michigan.” (Kerouac 152-153)

  This quote shows that the characters are being exhausted and bankrupted by the immense burden of their traveling. Yet, they continue to do so, because they want to run from their responsibilities.