Self-Discovery in Desolation Angels Stripped to its essentials, Jack Kerouac's novel Desolation Angels reads like a drug-induced stupor linked to casual sex (or its fantasies) , mixed with a fusion of jazz and poetry. The often adolescent impulses of Kerouac's character Jack Duluoz, however, are mere episodes in the fast-paced, write-as-you-think-it phase of pre-literary notoriety in the life of a man who essentially founded the Beat. generation. Although the overflowing stream of consciousness that makes up this book undoubtedly seems spontaneous, Desolation Angels actually examines, in the most direct and clearly organized way, the state of human loneliness. Moving from a mountaintop Forest Service outpost to San Francisco, from Tangier to London, and sliding from solitude to jazz clubs filled with "cats", from a morphine addict's bedroom to home from his French-Canadian mother, a knitter, the angels of desolation confront various forms, constantly dragging Duluoz/Kerouac. The novel begins as Duluoz/Kerouac climbs Desolation Peak on Starvation Ridge in the High Cascades for a seventy-day job as a wildfire lookout. He first anticipates with relish the idea of ​​an isolation which will allow him to reflect “on the meaning of all this existence, of this suffering and these comings and goings in vain” without the distractions of friends, of drugs or alcohol. Yet as the days continually dissolve into each other, he begins to tire of the monotony of the Desolation. The total emptiness that greets him from his point of view reflects the emptiness of life as he sees it. Titled "Desolation in Solitude", this chapter records his mental patterns as he despairs of the "Void", an uncertain entity that symbolizes an eternal, vast and indifferent force of ...... middle of paper .... .. He devotes eternal devotion to her, which seems to partly explain the source of his anger. He mourns the fact that a creature as healthy and pure as she will inevitably grow old and die without leaving a mark on anyone but him and his sister. Yet in accepting his mortality, he finds, for the first time in the book, an extended sense of peace. Throughout his previous journeys and travels, he sought serenity, only to be followed by Desolation. Here, finally, taking a bus across the country with a strong but innocent "Memere", he leaves them behind. By witnessing this change, the reader understands that constant movement cannot affect the sense of belonging, as Duluoz/Kerouac had thought throughout his story. passing excursions. Only confronting our relationships with those we truly love can answer our questions about who we are in this mixed world...