Beating time: Configurations of temporality in Jack Kerouac's On the Road

But to what extent has Sal escaped "inauthentic" time? Although Sal seems to share Dean's ecstatic revelry in the moment, when expounding his own thoughts, quite a different belief system emerges, one that focuses not on the fleeting quality of life, but on death. Early on in the narrative, Sal feels haunted, and ultimately realizes that "Naturally ... this is only death: death will overtake us before heaven. The one thing that we yearn for in our living days ... is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced... in death" (Kerouac 1976, 124). While the passengers use worries and fears to leave the present, Sal seems to look both backward and forward for release. Death becomes equated with birth, and life becomes the proverbial circle. Transcendence for Sal thus becomes a desire for a death that both replicates some "bliss" while simultaneously removing the person from time into heaven. Dean, however, remains unconvinced. Sal relates his feelings to Dean, who "would have nothing to do with it" because "we're all of us never in life again" (124). In keeping with his Heideggerian viewpoint, Dean realizes that since death is our final act, it makes sense to enjoy the moments of life that we are given, a belief that Sal finally admits is correct.

Although he agrees with Dean's admonition to live in the moment and forget death, Sal cannot escape his fixation. Later in the novel, alone in San Francisco and hungry, Sal passes a fish-n-chips joint and has a vision:

And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows ... and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness ... innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. (Kerouac 1976, 173)

Once again Sal's notion of transcendence involves death. But rather than a Heideggerian acceptance of death as a means to live life, Sal remains focused on death itself. Timelessness is achieved through death, not because of it. This conception is likewise firmly rooted in specifically Christian terms. The word "angels" is, of course, laden with religious implications, "mothswarm" evokes images of winged angels flying towards the God-created light at the end of the tunnel, and Sal's final destination is always conceived of as heaven. Heidegger sidesteps the question of eschatology in Being and Time, declaring "If `death' is defined as the 'end' of Dasein-that is to say, of Being-in-theworld-this does not imply any ontical decision whether `after death' still another Being is possible" (1962, 292). Ontologically, however, it would appear that a belief in the afterlife abstracts the believer out of the world and into a timeless infinity. Yet Sal's vision, despite its apparent "inauthenticity," nevertheless provides a means of escape "across chronological time" and into what he terms "timeless shadows." Sal may attempt to follow Dean's example, but ultimately his Christian belief in the transcendence of death differentiates him from Dean's belief in the sanctity of the moment. Although Sal follows Dean throughout the novel, he never entirely abandons his own moral conceptions. However, despite Sal's failure to emulate Dean, they nevertheless remain united in their mutual attempts to escape oppressive notions of time.