The motivation behind the beat movement was their thirst for freedom. They desired freedom from almost everything we take for granted today. "Central to the beat writers, though little noticed, is the desperate flight from the lower middle class life and its culture of anxiety" ("Jack Kerouac." Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 14, 305). The beats also had trouble dealing with the social aspects of living. "In both On The Road and The Dharma Bums this fugue, or flight, is portrayed on the realistic level as an attempt to escape from an intolerable personal or social sit

Quarterly Summer 1973: 385-407. Found in CLC, Vol. 61, 303-306.

They tried to express themselves through their abnormal actions. "The beats . . . saw themselves as outcasts, exiles within a hostile culture. . . rejected artists writing anonymously for themselves" (Gussow 310). They tried to gain recognition through any means necessary. "Their frantic flights across country, their rootless and disaffected behavior, but above all their profound sense of disaffection, testified to a growing spirit of discontent" (Feied 293). Feied relates that "In going on the road they gave expression, in the clearest and most direct way possible, to all the repressed longing and vague dissatisfactions abroad in the populace at large" (293). Their goal is to live as unpredictable, fun, and careless as possible. "Outwardly these may be summoned up as the frenzied of every possible sensory impression, an extreme exacerbation of the nerves, a constant outraging of the body. (One gets 'kicks'; 'digs' everything, whether it be drink, drugs, sexual promiscuity, driving at high speeds or absorbing Zen Buddhism)" (Millstein 279). They are also described similarly by Baro as the "Sexually promiscuous, drink and drug ridden, thieving, lying, betraying, they belong to volatility, to movement, to sensation" (281). They try to show what they are about so the rest of the country will be awakened by them. "The 'beat generation' and its artists display readily recognizable stigmata" (Millstein 278). They make judgments about each other not by their achievements, but by how reckless they are. "They measure themselves against one another: the maddest and the least predictable is most admired" (Baro 6). It would seem that this lifestyle would drain them of anything they had, but they manage to survive as bottom feeding parasites. "They get by on pickings from the imprisoned relatives, while they shout obscenities at the horror of it all" (Champney 286). This behavior is what really makes the otherwise tolerant citizens enraged at the beat generation. "There is irony in the fact that it is our lush abundance which enables a beat generation to avoid imprisonment in the system of work, produce, consume" (Champney 286). They beat's lifestyle is one of an immature, cowardly, parasite who can't handle the everyday values and pressures of living a normal life. They flee any responsibility to live a careless life, and then sponge off of people who work for a living.

Vopat, Carole Gottlieb. "Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road': A Re-evaluation." Midwest

Road'." The Georgia Review Summer 1984: 291-311. Found in CLC, Vol. 61,

Champney, Freeman. "Beat-up or Beatific?" The Antioch Review Spring 1959: 114-

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3854
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)