On the Road is both a modern epic of male escape from domesticity, peddling a fantasy of mobility as freedom (often at the expense of those left behind), and a disarmingly authentic search for meaning and spirituality in a fallen postwar world of conformity, capitalism, and prescribed sexual norms. In this course, we will try to come to terms with the novel’s complex legacy as we read it both in the context of its time and through the lens of Kerouac’s own background as a first-generation American born of French-Canadian parents.