As a movie lover, I have seen a lot of European and American movies, but the young life reflected in this film still makes me feel a little shocking. Moreover, this is based on the author's real experience. Let me see the so-called "Beat Generation" life.
There is no goal, no value direction, no social and cultural constraints on people, and only live according to personal preferences. Dean is a bad young man, but Searle likes Dean's passionate life and hangs out with him. Together with the girl Marylou, they do drugs, promiscuous, steal, and have fun, and they live aimlessly like this. Dean has no sense of responsibility as a husband and a father, and when he can leave the sick Searle and leave him, the value of friendship does not exist. They do not accept all traditional values and oppose all cultures. This can be said to be a manifestation of postmodernism.
One aspect of postmodernism is counterculture. Modernism is also anti-traditional, while postmodernism is more extreme. It can only be broken but not established, and the culture that opposes everything is his thought, without a set of cultural values of its own, just like the title of the film "On the Road". But the counterculture itself forms a culture, and there is value in destroying culture and opposing authority.
In the end, Marylou decided to go home and marry a sailor. Purcell seems to have found her own life. Dean is very depressed, but she has to face life again. It is said in the novel that they found a home in Zen culture.
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