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Read Wolves!
Welcome to WELL REaD, the reading blog of the Niles West High School IRC. We want to hear what our students and staff have to say about books. To comment about anything you read here, click on the comment link at the bottom of the post.
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On The Road is a rambling account of young passion and unrestrained drive. Sal, the narrator, recounts his post-WWII release with his friend Dean, the most strange, unpredictable character I have yet to encounter in literature. These two young men have dreams, wild and crazy dreams, each one as abstract and vague as the next. They have no real goal, just drives,desires, impulses. Parties, alcohol, marijuna, girls, and cigarettes are the only important items in their lives. The two team up with the same group of people wherever they happen to wander. For instance, after a party in New York, the group scatters, only to reunite by chance in Denver, for an epic weekend of drugs, sex, and alcohol. The era they live in is one where young men could set out for one coast from the other without fear, without a plan, comfortable in the knowledge that the people they meet along the road will help them to the other side. The book is of a lost time, where trust was a concept, something that existed outside of a dictionary.
Stu T.
As I mentioned earlier, Den Moriarty is the most unique character I have ever encountered in literature. He is almost a caricature, the physical rendering of pure existence. Everywhere he goes, there is something new to see, to learn, and Dean attacks these opportunities with Olympian fervor. He whips himself into a frenzy like a dog at the beach, throwing himself into every new experience head first, knowing somehow that he'll land on his feet, already running into his next great adventure.
His personality is gravitational. No one can escape the pull of his presence when he enters a room. Even the most wary of the Paranoid Angry Schizophrenic Society of Old Ladies That Hate The World And Young People would succumb to the charming smile and genuine laughter that is a front for his relentless con act.
Dean is a philosopher one night, arguing with Carlo Marx over the metaphysical, and player the next morning. He shuffles between two women, marrying and divorcing them alternatively. Any girl he meets is a potential mate, and he has fathered four children across the continent. There is nothing Dean cannot do if he sets his mind to it.
Dean takes joy in every experience, high on the thrills of existence. He runs at full force, without relent, until he crashes into the ground, just to wake up and pick up right where he left off. His life--marital and legal troubles aside--is his own American Dream, and he fulfills his dream beyond any measure. Every movement brings happiness, each success and failure is a victory for Dean, and with victory comes happiness, and with happiness is the completion of the Dream. His life is the dream, until the side effects of happiness and self-gratification, coupled with the negligence of anything substantiate and long-term, brings him crashing to the ground... permanently.
Stu T.
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