Comparing On The Road And Moby Dick

Published within a century of each other, On the Road and Moby Dick seem to occupy completely separate literary spheres. Herman Melville’s erudite whaling tale could not possibly have anything in common with Jack Kerouac’s counterculture gospel, one may reason. From afar, the magnificent Pequod certainly differs from a stolen Hudson. However, both vehicles are driven by a mad captain in pursuit of moral satisfaction and truth, chasing Moby Dick and chasing “IT.” The tragic protagonist, Dean Moriarty, of On the Road is nothing less than familiar; he is nothing less than Ahab reincarnated as a teenaged “holy con-man” (Kerouac, On the Road 216).
At the time he was writing, Kerouac was more than aware of Moby Dick, so the likeness of On the Road’s Dean Moriarty to Captain Ahab is no coincidence. Kerouac mentions Melville’s name on several occasions in his letters and diaries, and even compares his style to that of Melville’s: “What is my tradition? In form, parts of Moby Dick” (Kerouac, Windblown World 246). He also goes on to ponder the “Melvillian possibilities” of his later novels (Kerouac, Windblown World 39). While this may be

Kerouac creates a religion that worships at jazz concerts, with a congregation that meets in small New York apartments on Saturday nights. Like Melville, Kerouac’s conception of religion is idealistic and pure. They both have great faith in the idea of faith itself, though they criticize the constructs. Both writers had strict religious upbringings, so much so that Melville particularly approached religion “with a mixture of anger, skepticism, and dread,” (Robertson-Lorant, Melville: A Biography 32). Just as Ahab was fated to struggle with the whale, Melville “was fated to struggle with God,” (Robertson-Lorant 132). He “was a deeply spiritual man” though “he dreaded religious fanaticism and repressive orthodoxy” (Robertson-Lorant