To me, this course provided a refreshing reflection on many literary works and styles that I used to enjoy and seek out but have since become too busy to dive into as much as I would like. Throughout high school and a few short years after, literature classes such as this and the works contained within were some of my favorite topics to study and digest. However, since then my life has become much busier and time a much more precious commodity causing me to shamefully push my love for classic literature to the side. Furthermore, the last few years of my college experience have been mostly focused on my major specific classes, and with that being national security, the readings and writings I focused on have been quite different from what this class provided. While I enjoy researching and studying international politics, war, terrorism etc., this class provided a break from this often very narrow focus in terms of literature. As a result, this course helped me to reconnect with works I enjoyed many years ago and familiarize myself with authors and writings that I never had the fortune to enjoy before. It also provided a much-needed break from the often tense and convoluted world of political and historical literature that I so often fall into a sort of tunnel vision throughout my other courses.
When it comes to specific authors or works that I closely identified with throughout this course, I would have to say that “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac was both my favorite work we covered and the one that I often times found to be surprisingly identifiable to my own life. Oddly enough, I had read other works by Kerouac such as “Big Sur,” fittingly while living near Big Sur, prior to this course, but I never read “On the Road” for some reason. As someone who has lived almost as many different places as years I have been alive, I found one of the central themes in the novel, the constant urge to travel and find something more in life, particularly close to my own life. For instance, a few days prior to starting this novel I decided on a whim to drive to Los Angeles to see one of my best friends who had just moved there following his own 6-month journey around North and South America. On the way, I stopped in Denver to see some friends who are occasionally there in between their own travels. None of us are wealthy, we travel by car or train or discount air, stay at hostels or in our cars, and attempt to find something more out of life no matter how cliché that may sound. I quickly discovered that this was oddly similar to “On the Road,” and in that manner I identified with Kerouac’s work better than almost any other novel I have ever read. While many of the experiences in the novel are not in any way a reflection of my own life, I think most of that is simply due to the novel taking place almost three quarters of a century ago and the vast cultural and societal changes over those many years. However, I still feel that many of the core themes at the heart of “On the Road” are ones that I found to be surprisingly close to many of my own life experiences. Fittingly, much like Sal does in “On the Road,” I soon plan to attend grad school and to use my GI Bill money as a means to travel when I have the opportunities. I have many friends scattered across America who do the same, and while it hopefully turns out better than most of Sal and Dean’s trips throughout their journey’s in “On the Road,” it is a literary work that I find to be strangely identifiable and oddly inspiring.