Literature of the Picaresque

W Fernandez.

“On the Road,” by Jack Kerouac

Upon reading about the relationship between the narrator and Dean I thought about how we need people in life. Somewhat, for a given moment or time people come into your life to fulfill a purpose and then they vanish like was the example of Dean. Dean and the narrator meet because Marylou, Dean’s girlfriend, accused him with the police after a fight they had. Therefore, he had to “lam” for their apartment. Dean, being an ex-conn he was, would have ended back in jail. Hence, he needed the intervention of someone, and a good excuse as well for the help. Here’s why this is interesting to me, ironically people look for others just to fulfill a purpose and then move on like nothing ever happen. Although I understand the logic behind this, it’s quite touching to me because today people are straight forward with their intentions. For instance, when these characters meet in the bar Dean actually expresses his reality. In my own words, he is saying “Look, I can’t stay my girlfriend, I need a place to stay and I hope you can help” forget the intention with which I came to see you. Becoming a writer, forget that…… However, I also like the fact that Dean really wanted to better himself, be more intellectual considering the fact that he was in ex-conn, that was something good for that sense. This pattern repeats with Eddie, who was a free soul, and at the end became traveling buddies. Eddie ended up using the narrators clothing for warmth and eventually meets their end and Eddie vanishes.

As the story progresses to the point that the narrator is working his way to the west, I kind of thought about Lazarillo. Lazaro was trying to get to a specific point in his life and so was the narrator. Lazaro endure tribes and tribulations to make to where he wanted to go, so did the narrator of this story. Although the narrator of story did not endure the same pain Lazaro did, there is element of sacrifice that the narrator endures in order to make it to where he wanted to go.  For example: he stated “I’ve been all day and into the night going up and down, north and south, like something that can’t get started.”  But he continued trying just like Lazaro did until finally making it.

Season of Migration to the North.

Reading the finale of this book reminded me of “The Awakening” be Kate Chopin. In this book the main character went on swimming until she couldn’t continue and ended up drowning. However, it was left to the readers interpretation as to what happened similar to Mustafa where he found himself tired and almost drowning until he finally said I cannot die and ended up yelling HELP ! HELP! Besides the ending, the book itself was quite fun to read. It was interesting the scenarios where grandpa and his friends met and how they talked about their experiences particularly in front of a female considering that this was in the early 1900 and women were seen totally different.   Bint Majzoub was to me a very key part in the book being that she was who broke down the truth of what the narrator already knew what would happened in the event Hosna were forced to marry Had Rayyes. Over all I consider the book very engaging.