In the second part of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road (first published in 1957), narrator Sal Paradise and his friend Dean Moriarty pile into a car with Dean's wife Marylou and Ed Dunkel, and take off from the East Coast headed for California. Watching the miles slip away beneath them, Sal exults, “We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move. … [Dean] and I suddenly saw the whole country like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there.” To post-World War II Americans the idea of the frontier seemed lost in the distant past, but many young men and women still wanted to go West, to seek their fortunes beyond the horizon, to move. The road, stretching from every front door to every point imaginable, became a dominant artistic metaphor for self-discovery, and a particular character arose to inhabit it. Through Sal and Dean's exploits, Kerouac solidified the “road hero,” a character who found redemption and release on the open road.

The road hero is an enduring cultural mythic figure in American music, film, literature, and life that speaks to a strand of American reality.