1.1 The 1960s and Jack Kerouac
The 1960s is the most complex historical period in the American history. In the domestic area, the civil right movement of the black, the Vietnam War and the following anti-war movement, the women movement, the youth countercultural movement all happened simultaneously, leading to a huge update of the social value for equality, right and peace, however, it was also the most prosperous time after the World WarⅡ. The Baby Boom generation were more able to choose their life earlier than their parents because they cared less about their material life and paid more attention to the mental world, but this is only limited to the white people, the black ones also have to struggle for a better life and control their own fate.So either Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, they are all fighters for equal right who could been seen as hero for the blacks at that time. At the same time, the development of American’s media offered the citizens an opportunity to reflect what they had done. The more reports about the Vietnam War were broadcast, the more people thought that it should not happen at all. The youth didn’t want to participate into the evil war, so they kept holding all kinds of demonstration to show their attitude. All kinds of new cultural forms then came to existence, including “the pop music of the British band The Beatles and the concurrent rise of hippie culture, which led to the rapid evolution of a youth subculture that emphasized change and experimentation” (Wang En’ming 2008,p.17).