CONTRASTIVE

ANALYSIS OF JACK
KEROUAC’S ON THE
ROAD
Contrastive Linguistics
Carmen María Carpena Ortega
Universidad de Valencia, Curso 2013-2014
Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

1. INTRODUCTION

On the road (1957) is the book that will be analysed in this essay. Firstly, it is
necessary to talk about his writer, the American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac
(1922─1969), and the Beat Generation, of which Kerouac is one of the major
representative authors. The origins of the Beat Generation take place during World War
II and shortly after its ending with a group of disaffected young people, constantly
struggling for the search of a place to fit in but, at the same time alienated by the society
they inevitable belong to and seeking for a scape from it through unexpected journeys
which principally involve drugs, sex and jazz in all its possible varieties.

On the road is the most vividly representation of the young people of this
generation, dubbed beatniks, and the most influential book over the years to the present
day. The work tells the story of Sal Paradise ─Jack Kerouac‟s alter ego─ in a particular
time of his life (1947-1950), time which Paradise‟s called “my life on the road”
(Kerouac, 1957: 6) and which started with “the coming of Dean Moriarty” (6) ─real life
writer Neal Cassady, also an important figure of the Beat Movement. Thus, Sal
Paradise, fascinated by the insatiable madness of Dean Moriarty and its voracious lust
of life, will begin a journey following his enthusiastic friend back and forth the
American Continent, from New York, Detroit, Chicago to Denver, San Francisco,
Seattle and many more places until the trek of the decadence, Mexico City.

This insanity of the Beat Generation has been brought to Spain with the
translations of writer Mariano Antolín Rato (1943). In its repertoire of translated works
we can find authors such as William Faulkner, Malcolm Lowry or Gertrude Stein.
Regarding the translation of Beat Literature, which is what gave him the prestige he
possesses today, he has in his collection some beatnik essentials as William Burroughs,
Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He always signed these translations with the name
Martín Lendínez.

1
Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

2. ANALYSIS

I am going to centre this essay in the evolution of Dean Moriaty‟s discourse. Dean
Moriarty is the reason why Sal Paradise makes reality his dreams of “going West to see
the country” (6) and immerses himself on the road. Dean Moriarty was a hobo his
whole life, lived on the road, lost his mother at a young age and continued roaming the
streets with his father ─a drunken thief─, got obsessed with knowing his whereabouts
after leaving him, spent some time in jail and got obsessed with drugs, sex and jazz.
Dean Moriarty was also the best friend of Sal Paradise during this nomadic period of
time. Madness is the word that can better describe the Beat Generation and is also the
word that can better describe Dean Moriarty. As Jack Kerouac writes in this book,

[…] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones that are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the
ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like
fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in
the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awwww!”
What did they call such young people in Goethe‟s Germany? (Kerouac,
1957: 8).

The comparison of the Beat Generation as a new generation of romantics exhibits

not only its brilliance in terms of literature, but its brilliance in terms of degeneration:
every candle that burns has to reach his peak, consume and fade. “I saw the best minds
of my generation destroyed by madness” (Ginsberg, 1956), pronounced the other
eminent beat author, Allen Ginsberg. Thus, Sal Paradise decides to follow the mad
romantic beatnik Dean Moriarty to see his way through illumination and decadence.
The evolution of Dean Moriarty can be visible along the novel through his actions and
through his language. According to Sal Paradise, Dean is always smiling, talking, his
ideas come and go really fast on his mind and he is not interested on listening to what
other people has to say. Moriarty is a prophet of the Beat Generation to Paradise, who
keeps an unconditional admiration towards him, almost in terms of deity, that lurches at
the end of the novel.

Following with the comparison of the principles of Romanticism, the Beats also
were marginalised. Nonetheless, their marginalisation did not come from society but
from themselves, that is, it was not society who expelled them, but it was them who
“abandoned” society in consequence of not liking what it represented and not feeling

2
Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

reflected in it ─World War II brought along a devastating situation in socio-economic

sphere that beatniks disliked.

When we take these historical circumstances into consideration, we come to

the realization that the outcasts depicted in On the road were a tribe of
voluntary exiles, unlike Byronic heroes of Romanticism, rather than
involuntary victims. For the Beats, to exile oneself signified an attempt to
scape a normative lifestyle under a state capitalist society (A.T. Kuo, 2012:
18).

This scape from society is the topic on the excerpt I am going to comment below.
Dean Moriarty spends a short period of time with one of his wives, Camille, with whom
he has a daughter, Amy. Although he goes out every night and takes on moderately his
responsibilities ─he even got a job: “[…] the most ridiculous thing of his career” (175),
in words of Paradise, which is, “demonstrating a new kind of pressure cooker in the
kitchen of homes” (175) ─, he lives settled with Camille and Amy. However, this
stability is compromised when Sal Paradise appears one day at their home. Dean is so
excited by his new job, that tells the story of when he got a similar one to Sal Paradise,
and this is the way he tells it:

Man, ─cried Dean excitedly─ this is even crazier than the time I worked for
Sinah. Sinah sold encyclopedias in Oakland. Nobody could turn him down.
He made long speeches, he jumped up and down, he laughed, he cried. One
time we broke into an Okie house where everybody was getting ready to go
to a funeral. Sinah got down on his knees and prayed for the deliverance of
the deceased soul. All the Okies started crying. He sold a complete set of
encyclopedias. He was the maddest guy in the world. I wonder where he is.
We used to get next to pretty young daughters and feel them up in the
kitchen. This afternoon I had the gonest housewife in her little kitchen ─arm
around her, demonstrating─ Ah! Hmm! Wow! (Kerouac, 1957: 175).

This is how it has been translated into Spanish:

─Tío ─exclamó Dean muy excitado─, esto todavía es más disparatado que
cuando trabajaba para Sinah. Sinah vendía enciclopedias en Oakland. Nadie
podía con él. Soltaba largos discursos, saltaba, subía y bajaba, reía, lloraba.
Una vez entró en casa de unos okies que se estaban preparando para ir a un
funeral. Sinah se puso de rodillas y rezó por la salvación del alma del
difunto. Todos los okies se echaron a llorar. Vendió una colección completa
de enciclopedias. Era el tipo más loco del mundo. Me pregunto qué habrá
sido de él. Solíamos acercarnos a las hijas más jóvenes y guapas de las casas
donde íbamos y les metíamos mano en la cocina. Por cierto, esta tarde he
estado con un ama de casa de lo más maravilloso en su cocinita… los brazos

3
Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

los tenía puestos así… le hacía una demostración… ¡Vaya! ¡Sí! ¡Sí!
(Kerouac, trad. 1983: 231-232).

Regarding the Spanish version, the translator has come up with good solutions.
However, there are some solutions that are arguable. Firstly, we have to take into
account the particular way on which Dean speaks: he uses short sentences and there is
no much cohesion ─there is no time to contemplate connectors in Dean Moriarty‟s
mind─, but there is coherence. The translator has maintained that ─despite he has added
an unnecessary connector at the end: “Por cierto, esta tarde”. Also is characteristic of
Dean his colloquial way of talking, reflected in the vocative man (translated as tío);
expressions as Okies (adapted as okies, due to it does not exist in Spanish an equivalent
for this word); feel them up (as les metíamos mano); gonest (as de lo más maravilloso)
and, finally, with interjections (Ah! Hmm! Wow! translated as ¡Vaya! ¡Sí! ¡Sí!) which
are one of his personal traits. I do not agree, however, with the translation of gonest,
which is slang for „best‟ or „coolest‟. So, I think a better translation would be “[…] he
estado con la mejor ama de casa”.

The author carries out a word play by repetition of the word demonstrating
(demonstrating the pressure cook and demonstrating how he had had his wife in the
kitchen). Nevertheless, the translator has not transmitted it. He got a job demonstrating
a pressure cooker in the kitchens of homes has been translated as Consiguió un trabajo
de viajante de un nuevo tipo de olla a presión and arm around her, demonstrating has
been translated as le hacía una demostración. I reckon this wordplay could be
maintained if we substitute demonstrating by exhibir and exhibiéndose: “Consiguió un
trabajo que consistía en exhibir un nuevo tipo de olla a presión” and “rodeándola con el
brazo, exhibiéndose”.

We can detect some mistakes in the translation. When Dean starts telling the story
and Sal points out that he is doing it excitedly, the translator has chosen the structure
muy excitado. The problem here is that „excited‟ is a false friend and in Spanish it
means „entusiasmado‟ or „emocionado‟, not „excitado‟, so I would propose as a
translation “Tío ─exclamó Dean entusiasmado”. After that, we find in the original the
expression jumped up and down, which has been translated as saltaba, subía y bajaba. I
consider from the context that this means Sinah was really energetic and moved around
constantly so I would propose as a translation brincaba (which implies a kind of
emotion as well as the fact of jumping), daba saltos de alegría or a not so literal

4
Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

construction, no paraba quieto. Also, there is a punctuation mistake towards the end of
the paragraph: arm around her, demonstrating is a parenthetical phrase said by the
narrator, but has not been translated as such ([…]los brazos los tenía puestos así… le
hacía una demostración…¡Vaya! ¡Sí! ¡Sí!) The correct translation would be […] en su
cocinita ─rodeándola con el brazo, exhibiéndose─ ¡Vaya! ¡Sí! ¡Sí!

Finally, we can see in this fragment that he refers, with admiration, to madness
(“He was the maddest guy in the world”, 232). Madness is one of the pillars of Beat
Movement, a reflection of its principles and the goal beatniks (including Dean) want to
achieve.

Continuing with this analysis, the extract chosen to perceive the evolution of the
character of Dean Moriarty appears towards the end of the novel. After their trek to
Mexico, Sal and Dean have not seen each other for a long time: Dean abandoned dying
Sal and that was the last time they have been together. The next piece relates their
reencounter: Dean comes back to Sal (who has already settled his life) earlier than
expected; Sal lives with his girlfriend and they are planning a future together. Dean
decides to visit Sal because, despite everything, he is his best friend, the only one who
understands him and never judges him. Sal is Dean‟s safe place; Dean is losing himself
and needs to go back to that place.

He couldn‟t talk any more. […] “Ah─ah─you must listen to hear.” We

listened, all ears. But he forgot what he wanted to say. “Really listen─ahem.
Look, dear Sal─ sweet Laura ─I‟ve come ─I‟m gone ─but wait ─ah yes”.
And he stared with rocky sorrow into his hands. “Can‟t talk no more ─do
you understand that it is ─or might be ─But listen!” We all listened. He was
listening to sounds in the night. “Yes!” he whispered with awe. “But you see
─no need to talk any more ─and further”.

“But why did you come so soon, Dean?”

“Ah,” he said looking at me as if for the first time, “so soon, yes.
We─we‟ll know─that is, I don‟t know. I came in the railroad
pass─cabooses─old hard-bench coaches─ Texas─ played flute and wooden
sweet potato all the way.” He took out his new wooden flute. He played a
few squeaky notes on it and jumped up and down in his stocking feet. “See?”
he said. “But of course, Sal, I can talk as soon as ever and have many things
to say to you in fact with my own little bangtail mind I‟ve been reading and
reading this gone Proust all the way across the country and digging a great
number of things I‟ll never have TIME to tell you about and we STILL
haven‟t talked of Mexico and our parting there in fever ─but no need to talk.
Absolutely, now, yes?” (Kerouac, 1957: 306-307).

5
Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

This is how it has been translated into Spanish:

No podía ni hablar. […]:

─ ¡Vaya! ¡Vaya! Tenéis que escucharme ─éramos todo oídos, pero había
olvidado lo que nos quería decir─. En realidad, sí… bueno. Mira, Sal… y tú,
querida Laura… He venido… bueno, me he marchado…, pero esperad un
poco… ¡ah sí! ─Y se quedó mirándose las manos como apesadumbrado─.
Ya no puedo ni hablar… comprenderéis que esto es… o podría serlo… ¡Pero
escuchadme, coño! ─Escuchamos; él prestaba atención a los ruidos de la
noche─. ¡Sí! ─susurró impresionado─ Pero ya lo veis… no es necesario ni
hablar… y además…

─ Pero ¿por qué has venido tan pronto?

─ Bueno ─dijo mirándome como si me viera por primera vez─. Tan

pronto… sí… Bueno, ya sabemos… eso es, no lo sé. Vine con un pase del
ferrocarril, en un tren mixto… con duros asientos de madera… Texas…
tocaba la flauta todo el tiempo. ─Sacó su nueva flauta de madera. Tocó unas
cuantas notas agudas y saltó en calcetines─. ¿Ves? ─añadió. Pero,
naturalmente, Sal, puedo hablar como siempre y tengo muchísimas cosas
que contarte. De hecho, con esta cascada cabeza mía he estado leyendo y
leyendo al ido de Proust a través de todo el país y aprendiendo muchísimas
cosas. Pero todavía no he tenido TIEMPO de hablarte de lo que NO hemos
hablado: de México y de nuestra separación cuando estabas con fiebre…
pero no es necesario hablar. En absoluto, ¿verdad, Sal? (Kerouac, trad. 1983:
396-397).

As we can see, there is a tremendous difference comparing this Dean‟s utterance

from the former one. He no longer speaks coherently, quite the contrary, what he says is
incongruent, and sometimes we cannot even understand him. His discourse is full of
dashes, which in Spanish have really well been translated as suspension points. These
dashes represent doubts. As Sal says, “He couldn‟t talk anymore” (306). This sentence
is significant to the extent that has an important implicature: Dean Moriarty not being
able to talk anymore is proof of the ending of their friendship. With this sentence, Sal
Paradise declares their relationship, based on giving and receiving (on one hand, Dean
gave stories to Sal, who was a writer; on the other hand, Sal taught Dean to express
himself and write), is beginning to crack. They have not seen each other in a long time,
therefore, they have not shared new stories, and Dean has lost what Sal taught him, his
voice as a writer.

This extract seems to be focused on the matter of the speech. Dean himself says
“can‟t talk no more” (307); he knows he has lost his writing capacity. Later he states

6
Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

“no need to talk anymore” (307) and, maybe, what he is trying to do here is play the loss
of his voice down and mark a new epoch in the history of his relationship with Sal, that
is, nothing is going to be the same, but they still have each other. Further on Dean
speaks about leaving Sal alone in Mexico and, again, remarks that there is “no need to
talk” (307). He wants to forget this unfaithful fact and wants Sal to forget it too, thus,
they decide not going back to that subject.

“He was listening to sounds in the night” (307), Sal Paradise says. The lack of
concentration is another reason why Dean cannot speak. He has always been obsessed
with music up to the point of consider Slim Gaillard, an acclaimed jazz musician, God.
Slim Gaillard played scat, a kind of jazz that involves vocal improvisation (saying
anything that is in your head ─does not matter if they are actual words or not) following
a rhythm. Knowing this we can imagine that the inconsistency in Dean‟s discourse may
reflect his obsession with music as if he is actually setting a pace following the sounds
in the night he is listening to. Dean Moriarty has a fixation with a particular author too,
Marcel Proust. Proust is worried about the passage of time (In Search of Lost Time,
1871-1922); also is Dean, who had planned to visit Sal weeks after he actually visited
him (“But why did you come so soon, Dean?”, asked Sal ─307): he feels he is running
out of time. Time and still in capital letters emphasise this concern and the connection
with Proust.

When it comes to translate this fragment, the most obvious difficulties reside in
syntax and grammar, since there are not much complete sentences and nor order in his
speech. There are also some lexical problems, for example, wooden sweet potato
[ocarina]. The translator has decided to omit this in the translation due to the lack of an
equivalent in Spanish for this term; however, I think omission is not necessary and I
would opt for a more general term in the translation, ocarina de madera. The opposite is
given on the translation of But listen!, where the translator has made an addition, ¡Pero
escuchadme, coño!, which I consider unnecessary. Cabooses has been translated as tren
mixto, which I think is not entirely adequate, due to right before Dean says he “came on
the railroad pass”, so it is preferable to translate it as its Spanish equivalent, furgón de
cola. The same matter appears on the translation of hard-bench coaches: the translator
chose duros asientos de madera although „coaches‟ means exactly „vagones‟; thus, I
would opt for vagones con duros asientos.

7
Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

In this extract appears, as in the former, the phraseological unit jump up and down
[in his stocking feet]. I consider that this expression in English implies taking more than
one leap, so I would change the expression chosen by the translator saltó [en calcetines]
into dio saltos to make it more accurate. Continuing with word connotations, I will
speak about squaky notes firstly and, secondly, about my own little bangtail mind. It can
be inferred by the context that squaky notes are not only high-pitched notes, but also
irritating to the ears, so I would translate the phrase as notas chillonas instead of notas
agudas, the translator‟s choice. In relation to my own little bangtail mind the translator
has opted for con esta cascada cabeza mía. „Bangtail‟ is slang for „prostitute‟, thus, so
that the translation is more adequate and closer in meaning to the original and since
there is not a formal equivalent in Spanish, I would translate it as con esta depravada
cabeza mía. Nevertheless, the choice of the translator is competent too considering that
creates a parallelism with this gone Proust, that is, both Dean Moriarty and Marcel
Proust are mad.

3. CONCLUSION

Regarding the translation and knowing that the translator of the book is the
responsible of the translations into Spanish of a big number of works belonging to the
Beat Generation (that is, he needs to have a thorough knowledge of it) and even though
we do not know exactly the working conditions in which he translated it, I think a better
translation could have been made of On the Road. There are mistakes not only in
relation to the lexical, which in some cases can be understandable, but there are
mistakes even in relation to the punctuation, which is a more serious error (I have
commented one before), up to the point of not being intelligible some excerpts of the
book. With respect to the lexical, it attracted my attention the translation of get high,
which Martín Lendínez decided ponerse/estar alto would be a good translation for it
(Kerouac, 1957: 77 and Kerouac, trad. 1983: 106; Kerouac, 1957: 88 and Kerouac, trad.
1983: 121; Kerouac, 1957: 273 and Kerouac, trad. 1983: 356). Although I have not
talked about this matter on the essay, I believe it is worth denouncing or, at least,
mentioning.

Regarding the craziness of Dean Moriarty it can be justified by enquiring into his
background: his mother died when he was a child, his father abandoned him, he has

8
Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

always been on his own without need of taking on responsibilities, and he lived his life
taking the Latin expression carpe diem to the extreme. This is how the acclaimed
madness touched him and, just as Ginsberg said, destroyed him. The desire of achieving
this insanity is what makes him pass from a coherent and lucid to an incoherent and
absurd state of mind that he himself is not able to understand.

This frenetic rhythm of life of the Beat Generation can be reflected also in the way
Kerouac wrote On the Road: although during his journey he carried small notebooks
with him, where he wrote down his experiences, it was in April 1951 when the most
important part of the process began onto a 120-foot roll of teletype paper. He typed
night and day during three weeks, until he finished the book. The scroll allowed him not
having to stop repeatedly to put paper on the typewriter and to continue the frenetic
typewriting as a metaphor of the meaning of the Beat Generation.

Finally, On the Road, within the feeling of not belonging, is a book of finding
oneself and finding our own path. In relation to this matter, Dean Moriarty guides us
into a reflection: “What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road,
guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow. Where body how?”
(251).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

COMPARED BOOKS

 Kerouac, Jack (1957): On the road, New York: Penguin Group

 Kerouac, Jack (1983): En el camino (Martín Lendínez, trad.). Barcelona:
Editorial Bruguera.

CONSULTED BOOKS

 Hipkiss, Robert A. (1976): Jack Kerouac, Prophet of the New Romanticism,

Kansas: The Regents Press of Kansas
 Feied, Frederick (1964): The hobo as American Cultural Hero in the Works of
Jack London, John Dos Passos, and Jack Kerouac, New York: The Citadel
Press.

9
 Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

 Kuo, Adam Tyrsett (2012): A Comparative Study of Jack Kerouac and Ernest
Hemingway as Representatives of their Respective Generations, Oslo:
University of Oslo, p.p. 13-38
<https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/25312/kuo-
thesis.pdf?sequence=1> [Accessed on 06/04/2014]

ANNEX

1. Extract 1: English

10
 Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

2. Extract 1: Spanish (1/2)

11
 Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

3. Extract 1: Spanish (2/2)

12
 Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

4. Extract 2: English

13
 Contrastive Analysis of Jack Kerouac‟s On the Road Carmen Mª Carpena

5. Extract 2: Spanish

14