Possible Paper: Anxieties of the American Road

So I'm one of those freaks who considers researching and writing academic papers during the summer months when I'm supposed to be drinking some beer, swimming in lakes and scoping all the bikini clad girls from behind my shades and sun-blocked nose. However, I have the urge (yes, an urge) to write an academic paper; this is especially a good idea because when I apply for Grad School in a few months I'll need a "sample" of my critical writing between 10-12 pages. Hopefully this sample will be somewhat like the little spoonful of ice cream they give you free at Cold Stone so you'll buy some; I want my paper to say to various Grad. schools "mmmm.... I'm good ice cream. Buy me." However before I get over zealous about the Grad school hunt I should explain the basis for said paper.

This summer I've been reading a lot of different things-- mainly Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino. However, I also read The Road by Cormac McCarthy at the very beginning of the summer. After reading The Road and some of Kafka's novels, especially Amerika, I saw some possibility for a comparative literature piece despite how much I actually despise writing comparative literature pieces. You see, both The Road and Amerika come from some of the same raw materials. Each novel recounts the experiences of traveling through the country and trying to 'make your way' in America and each captures the anxiety of this burden. Kafka and McCarthy both construct the anxiety of their characters, Karl Rossmann in Amerika and the unnamed father & son in The Road, by juxtaposing the hopes, dreams and fantasies of what America could and should be with the America that they are actually experiencing.

The anxiety the two authors depict also are chronologically spread wide apart on the stages of these "imagined Americas". To research for Amerika, Kafka attended lectures that were being held on the budding country. Sometimes, his notions of America are completely intriguing because of the falsity of their assertions, although they can be based on completely real fact. An example is when Rossmann lands in America and sees the statue of liberty with the sword in her hand. As we all know, the statue of liberty has a torch but this imagined sword gives an interesting interpretation of nature of this new country for the immagrant to explore.

Likewise, The Road also is composed based on the imaginings of a largely imagined America. The landscape is bleak and gray as the result of some unnamed tragedy. Most of the population is gone and those that survived are struggling individuals or brutal bands of junkyard militia's with makeshift swords and clubs. There is no way to judge The Road in terms of falsity or truth because it is set presumably sometime in the future, but that too is unaccounted for, leaving the reader in an America overcome by a vertigo of whereabouts, lost, disoriented and anxious.

One could say that Kafka's Amerika captures the pre-apocalyptic rise of America while The Road captures the post-apocalyptic fall of America. These two novels represent similar perspectives of the American journey at diametrically opposed ends of the spectrum-- rise and fall. What we find though, is that this anxiety of being in America with the expectations of what that means dominates the characters and defines their journey. Both Rossmann and the father & son are striving to become what they perceive as a true American ideal; Rossmann by assimilating himself into this new land and the father & son by continuing the American legacy.

Despite their positions at opposing ends of the scale The Road does serve to provide a possible segway into a new rise, hinting at the end that perhaps 'the fire' will continue to burn and the long hoped for America, prophesied in the hopes of immigrants like Karl Rossmann, will become manifest again.

Possibly, although I have not read it yet, I would think that On the Road by Jack Kerouac could provide an interesting perspective of the Road narrative during a time of American opulence; a view from the peak of the climactic American experience after the rise of Kafka's Amerika and before the fall of McCarthy's The Road. I'm sure, although I have not read it.... yet, "On the Road" could illuminate some fascinating anxieties that come from the mind of the native-born and experienced American journeyman, a sharp contrast from both the immigrant Karl Rossmann and the immigrant-to-new-American-experience father/son duo.

Perhaps this topic for a paper is really worth pursuing and perhaps it is just an interesting study to look at superficially. However, it may come to fruition sometime in the next couple of months or it may wither shortly after this genesis but I'll be sure to keep you posted whatever comes about.