And So Is Dean Moriarty: Significance in On the Road and Beat Generation

by Billectric

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2003-12-20 17:38:00


by matador:

Dean Moriarty’s personality accepts the unconcerned ambiguity of the future, an attribute found amongst majority Beat culture. This is evident when Dean is telling Sal about the future, Sal asks:

“You’ll mean we’ll end up old bums?”
“Why not, man? Of course we will if we want to, and all that. There’s no harm ending that way. You spend a whole life of noninterference with the wishes of others, including politicians and the rich, and nobody bothers you and you cut along and make it your own way” (Kerouac 251)

By being bums, both Dean and Sal will spend their lives without being bothered by the constraints society imposes through the politicians and the rich. Because Dean feel no harm in ending that way, or nonchalantly saying he would become a bum “if [he] want[s] to”, this ultimately shows the unconcerned but passionate philosophy of just letting go (by being a bum) characteristic of the Beats during this time.