The Implications of Jack Kerouac’s Modern Flâneur in On the Road

Post-World War II society became increasingly reliant on automobiles as the primary mode of transportation in the United States, fostering conditions that gave birth to a modern reconceptualization of the flâneur. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road serves as a reference for character analysis, continuing and revising the Parisian origins of the concept. Drawing from literary works such as Virginia Woolf’s Street Haunting and Sherman Young’s essay “Morphings and Ur-Forms,” this essay argues that the protagonist of On the Road, Sal Paradise, embodies a uniquely American flâneur.