In Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49, the characters act in deviant ways outside of social norms. This in turn leads to a deviant subcultural group that competes with institutionalized authorities for power. In both novels, deviance is generally defined as a certain type of behavior, such as a drunken professor gossiping in a lecture hall full of students or a group of teenagers frolicking naked in a city park one afternoon. warm and sunny. However, deviance can also encompass both ideas and attributes (Sagarin, 1975). The primary understanding of deviance is based on the reactions of observers: something becomes deviant because an individual, a group or a society takes offense and reacts negatively (Cohen, 1966, Lofland, 1969). These negative reactions occur because viewers interpret what they see and hear as bad, senseless, strange, immoral, non-conforming, or wrong. Negative responses do more than define deviance; they serve as mechanisms of control and social power. By examining these novels from a sociological perspective, Kerouac and Pynchon examine conflicts between mainstream society and subcultural groups. The deviant behavior, thoughts, and attributes observed in the novels' characters provide a strong argument for Austin Turk's conflict theory of deviance, which examines conflicts of power and culture as the basis for deviant behavior. To begin with, Austin Turk's conflict theory of crime divides society into two groups: those with power "the authorities" and those without power "the subjects." In Pynchon's novel The Crying Of Lot 49, this is achieved by pitting Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate tycoon, against those of lower social and economic class...... middle of paper ..... . sh-Catholic origin, and his resemblance to a Fitzgerald hero, with a tragic death and filthy dust floating in the wake of his dreams (153). However, both novels express that subjects living by values ​​beyond social norms have some power to change societal norms. By examining the Turkish theory of conflict between authorities and subjects, it becomes evident that the deviant behavior observed in the characters in both novels is a method of power that influences cultural and societal norms. Thomas Pynchon: Allusive Parables of Power. New York: St. Martin, 1990Gomme, Ian McDermid. The shadow line: deviance and crime in Canada. Toronto: HBJ 1993. Kerouac, Jack. On the road. New York: Penguin Books, 1955 Pynchon, Thomas. The tears of lot 49. New York: Harper & Row, 1966