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摘 要

“垮掉的一代”是美国二战后涌现出来的一批作家，杰克凯鲁亚克是其中的重要人物。他的代表作《在路上》是一部半自传体小说，记述了他在1947至1950年期间的几次穿越美国的汽车旅行。本文通过《在路上》这本小说，旨在探讨“垮掉的一代”的精神困境，以及他们面对困境所做出的反叛行为。本文将分别讨论两大主题，精神困境和反叛，并探究其产生原因。

垮掉的一代的精神困境在书中主要体现在两方面——自我的迷失和反主流文化。垮掉派经常性的迷失自我，成为了他们的精神困境之一。“垮掉的一代”本质上就是反主流文化的。开快车，吸食毒品和性爱是小说中垮掉的一代的典型反叛行为。他们开快车，从而寻求一种超越时间和空间超脱和自由之感；吸食毒品或是滥用药物，帮助他们达到更高的精神境界，并实现“垮掉的一代”所提倡的“自发性写作”；他们通过大胆而裸露的性行为对虚伪陈腐的世俗做出反抗,进而唤醒美国民众的个人意识。

精神困境的产生源于作者的自身经历和当时的社会背景。凯鲁亚克的移民身份使其本身就不属于主流社会；而他后来漂泊的生活又让他无处寻找自我。当时麦卡锡主义之下高压的政治环境和物欲横流的社会使垮掉的一代感到迷失，也无法在主流文化中找到归属感。而反叛是他们面对困境所选择的出路。他们出格的反叛行为不是普遍意义上的堕落，而是对当时病态社会的强力反击。反叛具有重要的社会价值和文化价值，它不是单纯地对社会现实的不满，而是具有建设性和希望性的。

关键词：《在路上》 垮掉的一代 精神困境 反叛

1. Introduction

1.1 Jack Kerouac and On the Road

Jack Kerouac is an American novelist and poet, the author of On the Road. Together with William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, he is considered a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is known for his writing method “spontaneous prose”. Thematically, his works cover rebellious and controversial topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. He became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement.

On the Road is one of Jack Kerouac’s most prestigious works. It is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across America. The novel’s hero Sal Paradise travelled across America by hitchhiking or driving their own car with his friends Dean Moriarty and Carol Marx. They lived a life against the backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. On the Road, they start to believe in Oriental Buddhism and try to seek the ultimate meaning of life. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat generations. Many key figures, such as William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg in the Beat movement appear in the novel as characters. For example, William S. Burroughs is the archetype of Old Bull Lee, Allen Ginsberg is the archetype of Carlo Marx and Neal Cassady the archetype of Dean Moriarty in the novel, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.

Though there are some negative comments about the novel On the Road, the historic status of this novel is undoubtable. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked On the Road 55th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century. The novel was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. Ann Charters, author of the introduction to On the Road believed that just as The Sun Also Rises came to be regarded as the testament of the Lost Generation, On the Road will come to be known as that of the Beat Generation.

1.2 Need for the Study

As one of the most important literature works in 20th century America, the research of the novel has a significant meaning in the field of literature. The Beat Literature is one of the most important branches of post-modernism literature. By analyzing the novel correctly, we can have a better understanding of the post-modernism literature and the American culture.

On the Road is a controversial literature work and there are certain misunderstandings towards it. The description of the “beaten” lifestyles, including alcoholism, sex, obsession with jazz music, vagabondage and criticism of the politic and society, has raised an eyebrow. Some thought the Beat Generation refer to the youth who were not willing to face the reality, all these “inappropriate” behaviors were just the evidence for it. However, if we analyze the Spiritual predicament of the Beat Generation properly, we can understand their behavior and all this was some kind of manifestation of their rebellion. Underneath the rebellious, there are more to discover. On the Road as the “Bible” of the Beat Generation, analyzing it is no doubt one of the best way to learn about the Beat Generation and the Beat Literature.

Practically speaking, the Beat Generation’s spiritual predicament and their rebellion can also inspire modern youth. Nowadays in China, with the rapid economic development and the unrestful, unstable world political situation, money worship becomes more and more common and populism resurge. Many people held anger towards the government, and the society. The current Chinese society has some similarity with the 1950s and 1960s American. The youth nowadays may have the same predicament, and this research can provide us with some inspirations about how to deal with it.

Literature Review

2.1 The Beat Generation

The Beat Generation is a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The Beat Generation now often refers to the writers in this movement. At the beginning of the form of the Beat Generation, there are many young people who are dissatisfied with the reality of the post-war American society, but the McCarthyism and the political pressure left them no way to protest. Therefore, they chose an unusual way to express their anger — They dressed different, held contempt for traditional ideas, abandoned their studies and work and lived in the bottom of society, and from which formed a unique social circle and philosophy of life. In the 1950s, this group of youth started to manifest their rebellion through literary. Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959) and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of these literature works. Allen Ginsberg's Howl become a hit nationwide once it was published. Jack Kerouac's On the Road became the guidebook of life for many young people these days. The three books are all revolutionary and soon become the representatives of the Beat Literature. Central elements of Beat culture are rejection of mainstream values, spiritual quest, revolt of materialism, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. The members of the Beat Generation developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.

In the 1960s, elements of the expanding Beat movement were incorporated into the hippie and larger counterculture movements. Allen Ginsberg's work also became an integral element of early 1960s hippie culture.

The term “Beat Generation” came to Kerouac’s mind all at once one day when he was having a long talk with his friend Holmes about the “Lost Generation”. Kerouac stopped the conversation by saying, “You know this is really a Beat Generation!” Since 1945, Jack Kerouac, as well as Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, had made beat part of their vocabularies after first hearing it uttered by a drug addict and petty thief named Herman Huncke. Long before it meant black stockings, berets and Bongo drums, beat was a coded word for those in Kerouac’s circle, signifying a state of mind they all could identify with after the war—the feeling that came from being exposed to the extremes of experience, but being able nonetheless to look outward and upward. For Kerouac, who had been raised as a devout Catholic, it had another meaning—beatific. Kerouac also distinguished the Beats from the Lost Generation of the 1920s. He points out how the Beats are not lost but what they are searching for was answers to all the questions in life. Kerouac's obsessions with writers like Ernest Hemingway shaped his view of the beat generation. He uses a prose style which he adapted from Hemingway and throughout On the Road he alludes to novels like The Sun Also Rises. In many ways, it is a spiritual journey, a quest to find belief, belonging, and meaning in life. Not content with the uniformity promoted by government and consumer culture, the Beats yearned for a deeper, more sensational experience.

2.2 Previous Studies of On the Road

2.2.1 Previous studies abroad

The works of the Beat Generation are very controversial ever since its appearance. Took On the Road for example, it has been widely discussed since it was first published by Viking Press in 1957. The novel received a mixed reaction from the media at that time. Some of the earlier reviews spoke highly of the novel. When the novel was originally released, Gilbert Millstein(1957) wrote in an article published in The New York Times in 1957 that On the Road is “the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat', and whose principal avatar he is.” (Millstein 27). In his review for The New York Times, Gilbert Millstein also wrote, "its publication is a historic occasion in so far as the exposure of an authentic work of art is of any great moment in an age in which the attention is fragmented and the sensibilities are blunted by the superlatives of fashion" and praised it as "a major novel.” (Ibid) Not only did he like the themes, but also the style, which would come to be just as hotly contested in the reviews that followed. "There are sections of On the Road in which the writing is of a beauty almost breathtaking...there is some writing on jazz that has never been equaled in American fiction, either for insight, style, or technical virtuosity."(Ibid) However the backlash to the novel and these comments was swift and strong. David Dempsey(1957) published a review in 1957 that contradicted most of what Millstein had promoted in the novel. "As a portrait of a disjointed segment of society acting out of its own neurotic necessity, On the Road, is a stunning achievement. But it is a road, as far as the characters are concerned, that leads to nowhere." (Dempsey 19). While he did not discount the stylistic nature of the text (saying that it was written "with great relish"), he dismissed the content as a "passionate lark" rather than a novel." (Ibid). Although this was discouraging to Kerouac, he still received great recognition and notoriety from the work.

Despite the critical reviews in the years when the novel first published, people started to realize both literary and social value of On the Road. On the Road is now considered an extraordinary and representative literature work of the 1950s.

The biggest literature value of On the Road is its writing style, named “spontaneous prose” by Jack Kerouac. His own explanation of the style is that his writing is like the Impressionist painters who sought to create art through direct observation. Matt Theado(2000) thought that Kerouac endeavored to present a raw version of truth which helps foster a direct link between Kerouac and the reader; his casual diction and very relaxed syntax was an intentional attempt to depict events as they happened and to convey all of the energy and emotion.

The social impact of the novel is also highly recognized by later generations. John Leland(2008), author of Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think), says "We're no longer shocked by the sex and drugs. The slang is passé and at times corny. Some of the racial sentimentality is appalling." (Leland 13) He also adds "the tale of passionate friendship and the search for revelation are timeless. These are as elusive and precious in our time as in Sal's, and will be when our grandchildren celebrate the book's hundredth anniversary."(Ibid)

2.2.2 Previous studies at home

Previous studies of On the road at home mainly focused on the themes, and one of the most popular themes among the previous studies is rebellion. The spiritual predicament, such as the identity loss, is also a main topic of the studies at home.

The novel is of multiple themes: rebellion, religious, confession, self-redemption and etc. Among those themes many authors concerned on “rebellion”. For example, Xiao Minhan’s Rebel and Exploration of the Beat Generation (2000) appears in Foreign Literature Review. It took Jake Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg as research subjects, based on the political and social environment at that time, and it pointed out that the significance of the movement lies in the Beat Generation’s rebellion against the main stream ideology which oppressed humanity. Another scholar Lu Yalin (2004), in Rebellion and Compromise: The Thematic Study of On the Road in Contemporary Foreign Literature, believes that Dean Moriarty, one of characters in the novel, his actions formed a most thorough and subversive rebellion towards middle class values. Li Honglin (2012), her thesis Rebellion? Pursuit?——Analysis of the Indeterminacy in On the Road uses one of the chief characteristics in post-modernism, indeterminacy, as a research method to analyze the mix themes(rebellion and pursuit) in the novel.

The studies about the spiritual predicament in On the Road is much less than the theme of rebellion. Xiao Minhan (2010) had studied the spiritual quest of the Beat Generation and the significance of On the Road. Some theses are focused on the culture identity dilemma of the Beat Generation. Wang Haiyan (2008) discovered the Beat Generation’s predicament in the cultural identity. Li Yan (2012) had written articles about the spiritual dilemma of the Beat Generation in On the Road. Her research lay emphasis on the social background in the post-war period and has analyzed why the spiritual dilemma of the Beat Generation appeared and how it eventually ended.

2.3 Deficiency in Previous Studies

Currently, there are many theses about the rebellion in On the Road. Xiao Minhan(2010) has discovered the Beat Generation’s rebellion with their exploration in his thesis Rebel and Exploration of the Beat Generation (2010); Hu Yawen(2010) has discussed the roots of the Beat Generation’s rebellion in both thematic way and writing style. Xiao Na’s(2009) thesis compare the rebellion of the Beat Generation and the Lost Generation. From these previous studies, we can see that the researches on the rebellion theme is rather completed. In the meanwhile, there are some researches on the predicament of the Beat Generation in On the Road, but the number and the scale of these researches is way less than the studies of rebellion. And no scholar has ever do the study which combined the spiritual predicament with rebellion. In my opinions, the discovering of the spiritual predicament in On the Road is equally important. Combining the study of spiritual predicament and the study of rebellion, one of the major themes of the novel, and trying to analyze the rebellion theme in the spiritual predicament, is a brand new angel for us to understand the novel On the Road and the Beat Generation.

The Beat Generation’s Spiritual Predicament and Their Rebellion in On the Road

3.1 The Spiritual Predicament in On the Road

3.1.1 Loss of selfness

The loss of selfness was one of the spiritual predicament of the Beat Generation. "And if you read the book closely, you see that sense of loss and sorrow swelling on every page." Indeed, there are many descriptions of Sal’s feeling of loss in the novel. The following is one of the descriptions of Sal’s feeling when he was back to New York after a long journey.

I stood in a subway doorway, trying to get enough nerve to pick up a beautiful long butt, and every time I stooped great crowds rushed by and obliterated it from my sight, and finally it was crushed. I had no money to go home in the bus…It was dusk. Where was Hassel? I dug the square for Hassel; he wasn’t there, he was in Riker’s island, behind bars. Where Dean? Where everybody? Where life? (96; pa. 1)

By the time he came back, Sal was penniless and extremely tired. He stood at the heart of this metropolis and had an unprecedented feeling of loss in his mind. This place was his home but he could not find any of his friend here, instead, the crowded and cold environment of this metropolis made him nowhere to find comfort. A sudden and intense feeling of loss then came into him and made him ask “where is life?”. Though he just finished his first trip, he did not feel enlightened or joyful. The feeling of loss still haunted him and it clearly become one of his spiritual predicaments.

Another description of Sal’s loss his selfness was in the very beginning of the novel, when Sal was on his travel across America. During the across-country hitchhiking journey, Sal woke up in a strange place away from home. Suddenly he could not remember who he was, he felt like “a strange ghost haunted on the ground”. This directly manifested Sal’s loss of selfness. After a while, he had an epiphany that his future was in the west, was on the road. Only the road could help him found himself.

The quest for selfness was a consistent theme for characters in On the Road, as well as the Beat Generation. Jack Kerouac once had an intense conversation with his friend, John Clellon Holmes. Their conversation revolved around the philosophical question, such as “Where do I fit in? If this world rejects me, how can it be the best of all possible worlds.” And this kind of conversations and feelings of loss was quite common among the beaten people. Just like the novel has demonstrated, they felt loss from time to time and place from place.

In fact, the inner drive of “on the road” is to explore selfness, or even something bigger than self. The Beat Generation felt lost, and hoped that the road could find them the ultimate truth of life. In other words, the spiritual predicament drove Sal, drove Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation on their road to explore.

3.1.2 Rejection of the mainstream culture

The hero Sal was originally a normal, divorced, mid-class American, lived in the middle of the mainstream culture and the beat culture. But with the appearance of Dean Moriarty his life changed completely.

The following quotation of the novel showed Sal’s transformation from a member of the mainstream society to one of the marginal group.

Only a few days ago I’d come into Denver like a bum; now I was all racked up sharp in a suit, with a beautiful well-dressed blonde on my arm, bowing to dignitaries and chatting in the lobby under chandeliers. I wondered what Mississippi Gene would say if he could see me. (46; pa. 1)

Few days ago Sal was on his road, dressed in rags, and hanged out with farmers and wanderers. And now he was in the upper class, wore fancy suit and escorted with pretty girls. It was the way he should live originally, but now he did not fit in anymore. The following quotation had shown Sal’s struggle inside.

The night was getting more and more frantic. I wished Dean and Carlo were there—then I realized they’d be out of place and unhappy. They were like the man with the dungeon stone and the gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was solely joining. (48; pa. 1)

Going to watch opera with beautiful girl was the most enjoyable moment in the mainstream society, Sal, however, could not really enjoy it. People enjoyed the party together after watching the opera. With the ecstatic crowd, Sal remembered his “beaten” friend Dean and Marylou, then realized that he didn’t belong here, belong to the mainstream anymore, he was now the beat generation.

One character that frequently mentioned during Sal’s transformation was Dean Moriarty. He was one of the soul figures in the novel, and with his lead Sal became one of the beat generation. Not like Sal, Dean lived in the marginal group of the society all his life. He was abandoned by his parents, had been to jail when he was young. Dean’s fascination for Nietzsche and all the wonderful intellectual things made Sal become interested in him before they met. His charming personality and adventuresome experience attracted Sal even more. In the past, Sal only had dreamed to go to the west to see the country, but never actually set off. But after he met Dean, Sal’s life changed completely. Sal once said that “with the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road.” (3; pa. 1) It was Dean who drove Sal out of his original life and to be on the road, to become a beat generation.

Besides the impact of Dean Moriarty, another reason for Sal’s transformation was his own experience on the road. His experience made him realize the huge difference between the crudeness and the coldness in the mainstream society, and the sincerity of the people off the mainstream culture.

Sal had done various kinds of jobs on his road, but always earned little. Once he picked cotton and after one day’s hard work, he picked fifty pounds and earned a buck fifty. The owners of the cotton filed tried everything to disvalued his work and paid him as little as they can. They managed to take advantages of him.

In the other hand, he felt happy and free with people who were off the mainstream culture. He hitchhiked and met different people, who are as broken as him. They used their last dollar to buy drinks and cigarettes and shared with each other, talking and laughing together. He fell in love with a Mexican girl, Terry. This romantic affair effected Sal a lot. They lived on twenty dollars for months, broken but happy. They planned to go to New York together but they had not saved enough money for the trip; they tried to hitchhiked together but also failed due to several reasons. During his hitchhiking journey, Sal lived in different places, sometimes in motels, once in a tent on the cotton field with Terry and her family. it is one of the most shabby and simple shelters he had ever stayed, but it is also the most carefree and joyful time he had spent. He felt the warmth and sincerity from the lower-class people, which he could never got from the upper class society.

At a time, Sal lived with his friend Remi. They often stole food from barracks cafeteria, he had doubts in these illegal activities, but Remi always told him: “You know what president Truman said, we must cut down on the cost of living.” And Remi sometimes give their stolen food to a poor widow he knew who lived in a housing project like their own.

Sal and Remi are beats people. They didn’t want to care about money. The prevailing consumerism and the materialistic society made them feel sick. What they desired was running away from the mainstream culture and living a carefree life with some pure farm girls. But the cruel reality did not allow him to do so. The action of “on the road” and this rootless life were a choice of him, but a choice of no choice. Seemingly it was the Beat Generation who rejected the mainstream culture, but actually it was the materialism and consumerism prevailing in the mainstream culture that made them feel off the mainstream society frequently.

In reality the Beat Generation was never once in the mainstream culture. Actually it is exactly the opposite. Kerouac had defined that the people of Beat Generation would include — fugitives who lived outside the law; the hipsters, many of whom were disaffected war veterans and no longer cared about what society demanded of them; the black beboppers he had been meeting who had told him they were fed up with being second class citizens — in fact, Kerouac considered this particular group as avant-garde. With his French Canadian and Indian blood, he had never considered himself completely “white”—or fully American. And together they would create a spiritual path that would lead the world away from the atomic bomb and the sheer madness of another war into an ecstatic future.

With nowhere to find belongingness in the mainstream culture, the rebellion become their way to react at the spiritual predicament.

3.2 The Rebellious Behaviors of the Characters in On the Road

The American nation has the tradition of valuing freedom. As early as the 1930s there was an important ideological liberation movement, transcendentalism. The leading figure Ralph Waldo Emerson praised freedom in The American Scholar, “In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, —free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom, without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution.” (speech, August 31, 1837). This speech was very cordial in the meanwhile had a strong claim of individual voices. The romantic poet Walt Whitman, whose works were profoundly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalist movement, had spent all his life on praising the awakening of the national consciousness. His poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, was notable for its discussion of delight in sensual pleasures during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Leaves of Grass exalted the body and the material world. Whitman's poetry praised nature and humanism, and had a giant impact on Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation literature. Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Beat movement and its leaders such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s.

With such a tradition of the pursuit of freedom, therefore, even in the most rampant period of McCarthyism, a group of deviant young people came out and dare to challenge the social persecution and ideological constraints. It is in such a social background and the tradition of inspiration, "Beat generation" writers should be born, launched the "Crusaders" expedition. Their rebellion, their extreme way of life is the performance of their inner pain.

A significant performance of the Beat Generation’s rebellion was the idea of living to the full. They were not afraid to indulge themselves in things including drug abuse, driving fast and sensual pleasures.

3.2.1 Speedy driving

In the novel, Sal had four road-trips, which were inspired by Jack Kerouac and his Beat Generation friends’ real experience. So the description of the driving experience of the characters in the novel can be traced back to the Beat Generation’s personal experience in real life.

In 1950s, with the authority of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, the construction of the Interstate Highway System has changed American society tremendously. In just ten years, this highway system which is across the mainland America was established. It helps to transport more and more wandering populations from rural areas to cities, from cities to suburbs, from the south to urban black areas, and from Midwest to California. With the rapid development of other technologies like automobiles, it was convenient for people like the Beat Generation to travel.

The Beat Generation were not satisfied with merely driving to travel, what they enjoyed more is driving in an extremely fast speed. For example, in part three of the novel, Sal, Dean and other friends of them were hired to drive a Cadillac to Chicago. Dean had driven in a ridiculously fast speed, even Sal were feeling unsecure and offered to sit in the backseat. But Dean just didn’t care about the risk, all he ever desired was the freedom of driving fast, he once said that his soul is “wrapped up in a fast car”. Sal had tried to stop Dean from such dangerous activity, but he finally “resigned himself to all”. He wrote his ecstatic feeling during the speedy driving as follows:

Now I could feel the road some twenty inches beneath me, unfurling and flying and hissing at incredible speeds across the groaning continent with that mad Ahab at the wheel. When I closed them my eyes all I could see was the road unwinding into me. When I opened them I saw flashing shadows of trees vibrating on the floor of the cal. (213; pa. 3).

Though Sal sometimes felt anxious about the speedy driving, he certainly enjoyed it as Dean did in some ways. The road-trips and speedy driving were exactly what they had chosen as one of their ways to revolt. Driving fast for the Beat Generation means the transcend of the limits of time and space, means the temporary release from their predicaments, and means free from this society that had imprisoned them for long time.

3.2.2 Drug abuse

Drugs and alcohol are the necessities for the beats when they were on the road. Drugs was an access to a higher spiritual level for the beats, and helped them to expand their consciousness. Just like speedy driving, drugs were also a way to transcend the limits and reach freedom.

When Sal and Dean were in Mexico, they used drugs several times. There were some vivid descriptions of Sal’s feeling after having drugs. Sal felt himself leaning over a chimney, after blew it into his throat and all let out simultaneously, they were all high instantly. The sweat froze on his foreheads, and suddenly Sal had this illusion of lying in the beach at Acapulco. It was a surreal experience. With the help of drugs, people’s vison and imagination were expended in a tremendous way.

One of the principles of the Beat Generation is the transcendental communication between the soul and nature. And the drugs helped them realize it---drugs give them an access to cosmos and enable them to transcend the limits of time and space.

“Satori experience” or “illumination” was the significant part of the Beat Generation writer’s creating process, though in reality it was just a vison. The self-awareness triggered by drugs was the essence of spontaneous writing, which is one of the main writing styles of On the Road and many other Beat literatures, such as Howl by Allen Ginsberg. They claim that “first thought, best thought”. Jack Kerouac completed the first version of On the Road during a three-week extended session of spontaneous writing. Kerouac wrote the final draft in just 20 days, with Joan, his wife, supplying him with Benzedrine, cigarettes, bowls of pea soup and mugs of coffee to keep him going.

In part two of the novel, there were large pieces of writing on Old Bull Lee. Bull was a drug addict, he spent almost all his fifty-dollar weekly income on his drug habit. Bull had a legendary life and had travelled around the world. After all his unusual life adventure Bull had been through, he said “the final study was the drug habit”.

This character, Old Bull Lee, was actually based on William S. Burroughs, a key figure of the Beat Generation. Many of Burroughs's works are semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict. Burroughs’ first novel, Junky, was featured an unflinching, semi-autobiographical look at drug, or "junk" culture. With the help of Ginsberg and Kerouac, Burroughs(1959) wrote his most famous and highly controversial novel with its description of drug abuse, Naked Lunch. Together with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Kerouac’s On the Road, Naked Lunch was one of the most representative literatures of the Beat Generation. Burroughs’s works made drug culture become a significant part of both the Beat Generation culture and 1950s American culture.

3.2.3 Sexual activities

In On the Road, there were no lack of straightforward descriptions of sex. For Dean Moriarty, “sex was the one and only holy and important thing in life.” (2; pa.1) Dean was born humble and always lived in debauchery. He had very complex sex relationships with many people, man and women. In the 1940s and 1950s, America society was rather conservative with the prevailing of puritan thought. Dean’s activity was quite a revolt at that time.

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