Huckleberry Finn and On The Road

In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the author uses the character of Huckleberry Finn to narrate. In Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the author uses the fictional character of Sal Paradise to narrate Kerouac's account of two cross country trips which he made in the United States during the late 1940s. Both authors have created fictional characters behind which they are able to freely account for some of their own adventures and observations. However, Twain's narrator, Huck Finn, is less articulate and intelligent than the author himself, and sometimes Twain narrates through Huck's point of view, and at other times, Twain speaks through other characters. Twain's style of writing is thus that of a deadpan narrator, who tells of Huck's foibles without Huck being able to laugh at himself because he does not know that some of the things he does are funny (Bloom, p. 32). Many times Huck's remarks have a double edge: Huck is serious abo

. . .
rnals into an autobiographical work (Charters 6). The part of Kerouac's life which is chronicled in On the Road begins when he meets Neal Cassady in 1947. Cassady becomes the fictional character of the book's hero, Dean Moriarty. Just as Huck turned his back on his newfound fortune, Kerouac dropped out of Columbia University to hitchhike his way across America which provided the raw material for On the Road. During his travels, he sleeps with many women (e.g. Cherry Mary, Terri), gets drunk, and meets a lot of crazy people. Sal lived the unstructured life of a beatnik. Kerouac would eventually tire of life on the road, but not until he had written several more books and thought himself to have taken too many drugs in Tangiers with William Burroughs, whom he casts as the character of Old Bull Lee in On the Road [Charters 15]). On the Road became known as a product of the "beat generation" and was significant because the narration usually lacked sentimentality. Like Huck, Sal watched everything. But Sal was more aware of the irresponsibility of his characters than Huck was. Huck was caught in his own illusion, but somehow Sal sensed that Dean was a "drop out" in the school of life. For example, Dean defied the societ
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Huck Jim's, Huck Sal, Judge Thatcher, Sal Huck, Mississippi River, Thatcher Sal, Los Angeles, Sal Paradise, Huck Finn, America Sal, personal freedom, huckleberry finn, huck sal, adventures huckleberry finn, jack kerouac, judge thatcher, adventures huckleberry, huck concerned, los angeles, huck found, pap finn, twain's adventures huckleberry, mark twain's adventures, huck newfound fortune, downtown los angeles,
Approximate Word count = 2561
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Huckleberry Finn and On The Road