Essay on the Failure of Language in Malcolm and On the Road

The tribulation of Language in Malcolm and On the Road tush Clellon Holmes in his show The Philosophy of the Beat Generation characterized his progeny contemporaries as deep spiritual to him, the very eccentricity of the fifties with their characteristic sexual promiscuity, drug addiction, piffling criminality, and heterodox forms of self-expression was an attempt to assert ones individuality in the atmosphere of permeative conformity of that Golden Age. And judging by the literature of this era from the outer space of four decades one might conclude that incessant search for ones unfeigned self was, indeed, what this time was all about. The shaping of identity of a young protagonist (or its failure) is the dominant motif of the two outstanding works of the period--James Purdys Malcolm and squat Kerouacs On the Road, published in 1959 and 1957 correspondingly their central characters, Dean Moriarty and Malcolm, sever from the primal source of identity--their fathers, are on a quest to recover the touch with that most fundamental aspect of their individuality. Defining oneself in family to language is an essential part of this quest. There is a certain magnetic force about Malcolm and Dean that wins over hobos, billionaires, chanteuses, and bohemians alike but whatever the spirit of their charm might be, it is not linguistic. Indeed, both Malcolm and Dean are at odds with standard English. Malcolms verbal innocence makes him a foreigner to whatsoever circle he finds himself in the pattern corruption in the novel, therefore, requires that his mentors discover him to the vocabulary which stands for yet another aspect of the wickedness they are to start out him in. This is an arduous task, given the extent to which Malcolm is a... ...y appropriated, were the heroes of the generation (Krupat 407). Purdys novel, on the other hand, denies his Everyman a father, humanity its God, and the world any meaning. Works cited Adams, Stephen D. James Purd y. London wad, 1976. Holmes, John C. The Philosophy of the Beat Generation. On the Road. textbook and Criticism. By Jack Kerouac. Ed. Scott Donaldson. unseasoned York Penguin, 1979. 367-79. Kerouac, Jack. On the road. Ed. Scott Donaldson. New York Penguin, 1979. Krupat, Arnold. Dean Moriarty as Saintly Hero. On the Road. Text and Criticism. By Jack Kerouac. Ed. Scott Donaldson. New York Penguin, 1979. 397-411. Lorch, Thomas M. Purdys Malcolm A Unique Vision of Radical Emptiness. Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature. 6 (1965) 204-13. Purdy, James. Malcolm. London, New York Serpents Tail, 1994.