A Comparison of On the Road and Crying of Lot 49 Essay -- comparison c

In both Jack Kerouac’s, On the Road, and Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 the characters act in a deviant manner outside of social norms. This in turn leads to a deviant sub-cultural group which competes with the institutionalized authorities for power. Deviance in both novels is usually defined as a certain type of behaviour, such as an inebriated professor babbling on in a lecture hall filled with students or a group of teenagers frolicking naked in a city park on a hot and sunny afternoon. However, deviance can also encompass both ideas and attributes (Sagarin, 1975). The primary understanding of deviance rests in the reactions of observers, something becomes deviant because an individual, group or society takes offense and reacts negatively (Cohen, 1966, Lofland, 1969). These negative reactions occur because onlookers interpret what they see and hear as being bad, insane, strange, immoral, non-conforming, or wrong. Negative responses do more than define deviance; t hey serve as mechanisms of social control and power. In examining these novels from a sociological perspective, both Kerouac and Pynchon examine conflicts between mainstream society and sub-cultural groups. The deviant behaviour, thoughts, and attributes observed from the characters within the novels provide a strong argument for Austin Turk’s conflict theory of deviance, which examines power and cultural conflict as a basis for deviant behaviour. To begin, 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 realized by contrasting Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul to those of low social economic class... ...sh-Catholic background, and his resemblance to a Fitzgerald hero, with a tragic death and foul dust floating in the wake of his dreams (153).    However, both of the novels express those subjects living by values beyond the social norms as having some power to change societal norms. By examining Turk’s theory of conflict between authorities and subjects, it becomes apparent the deviant behaviour observed from the characters in both novels is an influencing method of power to alter cultural and societal norms.      WORKS CITED Dugdale, John. Thomas Pynchon: Allusive Parables of Power. New York: St.Martin, 1990 Gomme, 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 Crying Of Lot 49. New York: Harper & Row, 1966