‘On The Road’ by Jack Kerouac
Context
Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. He had a private and
Catholic early education, and he got a football scholarship to Columbia
University, where he met Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William Burroughs.
Kerouac quit school his sophomore year and joined the Merchant Marine,
starting the travels of his youth which would become the basis of On the Road,
his second and most acclaimed novel. On the Road, published in 1957, became
the most famous work of the Beat Generation of writers. It is known to be an
account of Kerouac's ("Sal Paradise") travels with Neal Cassady ("Dean
Moriarty"). The main characters are based on Kerouac's friends, many of them
prominent Beat Generation writers like Allen Ginsberg ("Carlo Marx") and
William Burroughs ("Bull Lee"). With his long, stream-of-consciousness
sentences and page-long paragraphs, Kerouac sought to do no less than
revolutionize the form of American prose. According to Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac
typed the first draft of On the Road on a fifty-foot-long roll of paper.
On the Road gave voice to a rising, dissatisfied fringe of the young generation of
the late forties and early fifties. It was after the Great Depression and World War
II and more than a decade before the Civil Rights movement and the turmoil of
the '60s. Yet, though it has been fifty years since the events in On the Road, the
feelings, ideas, and experiences in the novel are still remarkably fresh as
expressions of restless, idealistic youth who yearn for something more than the
bland conformity of a generally prosperous society.
Other works by Jack Kerouac include his first novel, The Town and the City,The
Dharma Bums (based on his explorations of Buddhism with friend and poet Gary
Snyder), The Subterraneans,Big Sur,Visions of Cody (a densely packed, more
experimental account of the events in On the Road), and Visions of Gerard
(based on Kerouac's brother and childhood in Massachusetts). Kerouac died in
St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of 47.
Summary
In the winter of 1947, the reckless and joyous Dean Moriarty, fresh out of another
stint in jail and newly married, comes to New York City and meets Sal Paradise, a
young writer with an intellectual group of friends, among them the poet Carlo
Marx. Dean fascinates Sal, and their friendship begins three years of restless
journeys back and forth across the country. With a combination of bus rides and
adventurous hitchhiking escapades, Sal goes to his much-dreamed-of west to join
Dean and more friends in Denver, and then continues west by himself, working
as a fieldworker in California for awhile, among other things. The next year, Dean
comes east to Sal again, foiling Sal's stable life once more, and they drive west
together, with more crazy adventures on the way at Bull Lee's in New Orleans,
ending in San Francisco this time. The winter after that, Sal goes to Dean, and
they blaze across the country together in friendly fashion, and Dean settles in
New York for awhile. In the spring, Sal goes to Denver alone, but Dean soon joins
him and they go south all the way to Mexico City this time.
Through all of this constant movement, there is an array of colorful characters,
shifting landscapes, dramas, and personal development. Dean, a big womanizer,
will have three wives and four children in the course of these three years.
Perceptive Sal, who at the beginning is weakened and depressed, gains in joy and
confidence and finds love at the end. At first Sal is intrigued by Dean because
Dean seems to have the active, impulsive passion that Sal lacks, but they turn out
to have a lot more in common. The story is in the details.
Characters
Sal Paradise - The narrator, a young writer.
Dean Moriarty - The hero, a reckless, energetic, womanizing young man from
Colorado who has been in and out of jail.
Carlo Marx - A good friend of Sal and Dean's, a brooding poet who is sensual
and energetic.
Marylou - Dean's first wife, a pretty "dumb" blonde from Colorado.
Ed Dunkel - A tall, affable friend of Sal and Dean's. Not too bright, he'll do
anything Dean says.
Galatea Dunkel - Ed Dunkel's serious, disapproving newlywed wife.
Remi Boncoeur - An old friend of Sal's from prep school. Remi, a flamboyant
Frenchman, is a petty thief and gambler, constantly in debt but extravagant and
sometimes gallant and generous.
Lee Ann - Remi Boncoeur's sulky girlfriend.
Sal's aunt - She is tolerant, supportive, and kind. Sal lives at her house in
Paterson, New Jersey, and Long Island. Throughout Sal's wanderings, she sends
him money.
Chad King - Sal's friend from Denver; young, slim, blond and soft-spoken. He
is interested in philosophy, anthropology, and pre-historic Indians.
Tim Gray - A friend of Sal's in Denver.
Roland Major - A friend with whom Sal lives briefly in Denver. Major is a
Hemingway-esque writer who is scornful of "arty" types but snobby himself, often
talking to Sal about Europe and fine wines.
Camille - Dean's second wife, for whom he divorces Marylou. Loyal Camille
lives in San Francisco with her and Dean's children.
The Rawlinses - Ray and Babe, brother and sister, Denver friends of Sal's
group. Babe, "an enterprising blonde," is Tim Gray's girlfriend.
Rita Bettencourt - A waitress in Denver whom Dean sets up with Sal.
According to Dean, she has a "sex problem." Sal tries to prove to her that sex is
beautiful, but he fails to impress her.
Old Bull Lee - "Long, lean, strange and laconic," a long-time friend of Sal and
Carlo, the teacher of their group. A traveler, writer, and junkie.
Elmer Hassel - A lost friend whom Sal and Dean seek everywhere they go.
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Jane Lee - Bull Lee's sarcastic wife, a benzedrine junkie.
Lucille - A married woman in New York whom Sal wants to marry for awhile.
Denver D. Doll - A Central City friend, whom Sal sees all over town. Eager
Denver D. Doll shakes hands and makes sometimes-incoherent pleasantries
("Good afternoon" at midnight, "Happy New Year," etc.)--from morning to night,
a caricature of an official.
Terry - A pretty Mexican girl with whom Sal spends fifteen days in California.
She comes from a family of grape-pickers in Sabinal, has a son, and is trying to
escape a husband who beat her.
Rickey - Terry's wild, drunk, happy-go-lucky brother whom Sal meets in
Sabinal.
Ponzo - Terry and Rickey's friend, a manure-seller who smells like it. Big and
eager to please, Ponzo is in love with Terry.
Johnny - Terry's seven-year-old son.
Hingham - Sal's friend in Tucson, Arizona; a shy writer who lives with his wife,
baby, and mother.
Slim Gaillard - A friend of Dean's in San Francisco, Slim goes to jazz joints and
adds the suffix "orooni" to everything he says.
Roy Johnson - A friend of Sal's who chauffeurs Dean and Sal in San Francisco..
Inez - Dean's third wife, a sexy brunette he meets in New York.
Stan Shephard - An enthusiastic friend of Tim Gray's who goes to Mexico with
Dean and Sal. Stan has a controlling grandfather he is trying to escape.
Victor - The kind, polite Mexican man; Sal, Dean, and Stan's guide in Gregoria.
Part I, Chapters 1-2
Summary
The narrator, Sal Paradise, starts to tell the story: he, with his "intellectual"
friends, was a young writer in New York City in the winter of 1947, depressed and
bored, when Dean Moriarty arrived in New York City. Dean has just gotten out of
reform school, just married a pretty young blonde, Marylou, and they have come
to New York City for the first time, from Denver. Sal heard of Dean before from
Chad King and was intrigued--Dean used to write Chad from jail, asking
questions about Nietzsche. Sal and his friends go to see Dean and Marylou in a
dumpy flat in Spanish Harlem. Dean comes to the door in his shorts; he is
occupied with Marylou, and he has to make explanations to her. Dean is frenetic,
hyper, and full of ideas. He speaks formally, in long, rambling sentences. Sal's
first impression of Dean is that he is like a young Gene Autry, a real
representative of the West. They drink and talk until dawn.
Dean and Marylou are living in Hoboken, and Dean has gotten a job in a parking
lot. They fight, Marylou sets the police after him, and Dean goes to where Sal
lives--his aunt's house in Paterson, New Jersey. Marylou has left Dean and gone
back to Denver. Sal and Dean talk about writing in intellectual jargon that Sal
admits neither of them truly understand; Dean has come to Sal and his friends
because he wants to be a writer and a "real intellectual." Sal likes Dean's
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madness. It is decided that Dean will stay with Sal for a while, and that they will
go West together sometime.
Sal and Dean go to New York for a night out, and Dean and Sal's friend, the
energetic young poet Carlo Marx, meet and hit it off, talking non-stop. Sal doesn't
see them for two weeks; they talk night and day, about writing and poetry and
madness, of the people they know--who will all collide in the near future. Sal feels
something starting.
Spring arrives, and everyone is getting ready to go somewhere. At the bus station,
Carlo and Dean and Sal take pictures in the booth before Dean, proud wearing a
new suit, leaves to go back to Denver; his "first fling" in New York is over. Sal
gives a rhapsodic description of Dean's abilities as "the most fantastic parking-lot
attendant in the world." Sal promises himself that he will follow Dean west soon.
He likes Dean because of his exuberance, eagerness, uneducated intelligence, and
what he sees as his Western spirit, different from Sal's other friends,
"intellectuals" or criminals. Sal feels like Dean is a long-lost brother. Also he
admits to being interested in Dean as a writer needing new experiences.
In July, with fifty dollars, having written half of a novel, Sal heads west.
Consulting many maps and books, he plans to take Route 6 the whole way--a
winding red line from Cape Cod through to Los Angeles. To do this, he has to go
to Bear Mountain, forty miles north. He hitchhikes there and ends up on a
winding mountain road in pouring rain, with few cars passing, cursing himself for
being a fool. Finally a couple picks him up, and the man suggests a more sensible
route; Sal knows he is right. He has to go back to the city--where he started from
24 hours ago. Anxious to get west as fast as possible now, he spends most of his
money and takes a bus to Chicago the next day.
Commentary
On the Road is a novel of characters more than of plot, of moods and places,
visions described, and above all, the unceasing movement of the characters. It is
all centered on the hero, Dean Moriarty. Here the scene is set, with descriptions
of Sal's life before Dean, and foreshadowing of their sadder, older lives after this
period. In the first sentence, Sal says that he has just split with his wife and
recovered from a serious illness. He feels depressed and tired, stagnant. Dean's
arrival and personality spark everything into motion. Sal has always dreamed of
the West, where he has never been, and Dean, the personification of Sal's dream
of the West, arrives. The theme of ideas of the East--intellectual, stagnant, old,
saddened, and critical--versus ideas of the West--passionate, young, exuberant
and wild--starts here; characters are often described with the attributes of the
places which they are from--or rather, Sal's idea of that place (See descriptions of
Dean and Marylou). Both Dean, "Western kinsman of the sun," and the West, for
Sal, are new horizons, wild, open and free.
In the first-person narrative, we can only see, think, and feel through Sal, further
filtered by the lens of memory, and Kerouac sticks to this thoroughly and
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admirably. Sal thinks in verbose descriptive impressions and long, rambling
sentences, like the way Sal and Dean and Carlo talk, and dense paragraphs often
over a page long. The sentences attain a breathless quality, skillfully embodying
the excitement and motion of the characters and events (for an example, see the
150-word sentence describing Dean working as a parking-lot attendant). In a
more sober interpretation, the language is sometimes elegiac, suggesting Sal's
nostalgia for a past that is irretrievably gone.
Sal describes his friends as thoroughly and truthfully as he can, and seems to also
depict himself truthfully, sometimes self-deprecatingly. He is definitely the
writer, the observer, often a little behind or at a distance--perhaps to see more
clearly: when Dean and Carlo Marx meet, Sal falls behind them at once, watching
them. He's also late in starting west, and can't hitchhike and travel as easily as he
thought, having to take the bus all the way to Chicago. The others, he imagines,
are already there, having great fun. Sal's appreciation of Dean's reckless
impulsiveness and seeming ease is sharpened by his desire to have these qualities
himself.
The opening section also introduces an important characterization of Dean as a
"holy con-man": the combination of veneration and truthful perception is a tone
central to the entire novel. The idea of a trickster hero-saint appears in many
mythologies, such as the Monkey King in Chinese literature. In On the Road, this
idea is humanized and complex, applying to both Dean and the events of the
novel. Sal knows that eventually, Dean may disappoint and desert him, but he
loves him anyway and goes along for the adventure. Dean is saint and con-man at
once. It's a kind of faith Sal is describing, making reason and rationality
irrelevant. Similarly, the adventure may later prove to be a hollow sham, but for
this moment, it is grand.
Part I, Chapters 3-5
Summary
After stopping for a day and night in Chicago, where he walks around and listens
to some bop music, Sal takes the bus to Illinois, and from there, hitchhikes to
Davenport, Iowa, where he sees his much-dreamed-of Mississippi River for the
first time. After standing on a beautiful but empty crossroads until dusk, Sal
decides to try where the big trucks pass by the gas stations. He's in luck, and a
garrulous truck driver picks him up. Sal enjoys the ride, sitting up high in the cab
and yelling back and forth with the truck driver. The truck driver blinks his lights
to signal another truck driver behind them, and Sal switches trucks at Iowa City:
another driver just like the first. Finally, Sal's going west fast. The second driver
drops him off in Des Moines. Sal tries to get a room at the Y, but they're full, so he
ends up in a grungy hotel by the railroad tracks, where he sleeps all day. At
sunset, he wakes, exhausted, with a strong feeling of disorientation: for about
fifteen seconds, he has no idea where he is, or even who he is.
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He packs his bag and keeps moving. He eats a meal of apple pie and ice cream-all he has been eating on his trip--and sees beautiful Des Moines girls everywhere
he looks, but he's in a hurry to get to Denver. Hitching again, he meets Eddie, a
"rednose young drunk" from New York, and they decide to hitch together. They
get stuck in another small town and stop at a bar. Eddie gets drunk and joyous.
They try to hitch again with no success, so finally Sal pays for them both to take a
bus to Omaha. They keep hitching. One of the rides is with a cowboy-type, who
tells Sal about how he used to hop freight trains during the Depression. At a
diner, Sal sees a big Nebraska farmer with a huge booming laugh who seems to
him to be the spirit of the West. They get stuck briefly in Shelton, where it is
raining, and Sal lends Eddie a shirt. A carnival owner asks them if they want to
work with the carnival and they decline, but laugh about the idea afterwards. The
next ride only has room for one, and without a word, Eddie takes it.
Sal, alone again, catches what he considers the greatest ride of his life, on a
flatboard truck driven by two smiling young farmers on their way to Los Angeles,
who are picking up everyone they see. The back is filled with characters,
including the sneaky-looking "Montana Slim" and the kind hobo "Mississippi
Gene." Gene is taking care of a quiet young boy; Sal likes them and buys
cigarettes for them. They have a rollicking time, only stopping for food and
"pisscalls". At one stop, they chip in together to buy a bottle of whiskey. Sal
watches the landscape change in the open air from farmlands to the rangelands of
the plains; he's never seen anything like it. At one point, Montana Slim has to
pee. The farmers don't stop, so he decides to go over the side. Someone alerts the
farmers, who swerve back and forth so Montana Slim pees all over himself, which
is funny to everyone except for him. Finally, with Sal drunk and looking at the
stars, they arrive in Cheyenne. Sal and Montana Slim get off, and the truck goes
off into the night.
Sal and Montana Slim hit the bars. Sal tries to pick up a Mexican waitress, but
she puts him off kindly. They go to another bar and pick up two plain girls. Sal is
getting more drunk and spends all but his last two dollars, wanting to sleep with
one of the girls, but she isn't interested. Sal falls asleep in the bus station. He
wakes alone and goes out to the highway to hitch again. He's sick and hungover at
first, but feels better when he gets to Longmont, Colorado. After a nap on a patch
of grass in front of a gas station, he looks at the Rockies and feels more and more
excited, anticipating Denver. He is full of joy when his next ride lets him off at
Larimer Street, in Denver.
Commentary
Sal's adventures west begin. The descriptions of the places he passes through are
full of exuberance. The long sentences and paragraphs convey the feeling of
constant, rolling motion (keep in mind that Kerouac typed a draft of On the Road
on one 50-foot long roll of paper). The only lull occurs, briefly, when Sal is in the
Des Moines hotel and wakes up not knowing who or where he is. He says he is
halfway across America, "at the dividing line between the East of my youth and
the West of my future." The geography parallels Sal's emotions: he is opening up,
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giving forms to what were before just ideas and dreams. He feels this everywhere:
as he goes West, even his staple dish of apple pie and ice cream is getting bigger
and better. Every character he meets is not only an individual, but an epitome of
a region, a way of living, like the laughing Nebraska farmer in the diner.
Everything is described in superlatives: "incredible," the best, the hugest, the
sweetest, "the prettiest girls in the world." Sal is making a personal pilgrimage;
Denver is the Promised Land, San Francisco is an even greater "vision," the
Nebraska farmlands are like the Nile Valley. He is going to Denver, the birthplace
of Dean, who is the avatar of Sal's vision of the West.
Sal's compassion and clear-eyed tolerance manifest more clearly in this section.
Because he sees Mississippi Gene as gentle and kind and feels sorry for the boy
Gene is taking care of, he goes out of his way to be considerate to them, offering
them whiskey and cigarettes. Sal knows right from the start that Montana Slim is
"sneaky," and Slim proves this by bragging about being a mugger. Yet, this
doesn't stop Sal from enjoying Slim's company in Cheyenne. He even revises his
opinion slightly, observing how Slim dutifully writes a postcard to his "Paw."
Sal envisions the people and places around him in grand terms, but he is quite
modest about himself. Mostly, he seems to be constantly pleased, and almost
disbelieving, that he is finally living the adventures of which he dreamed. He
pictures himself in the eyes of his friends, stumbling into Denver like a prophet,
mysterious and ragged from his adventures, but we know him to be far too selfconscious, earnest, and infatuated with everything around him to affect this kind
of cool distance.
Part I, Chapters 6-10
Summary
Sal's first stop in Denver is Chad King's house, where Chad lives with his parents.
Sal learns that Dean and Carlo Marx are in town, but Chad hasn't seen them. Sal
senses that there has been a break in their group.
Sal moves in with Roland Major, into an apartment owned by Tim Gray's parents.
Sal describes Major--a Hemingway-esque writer type who is scornful of the "arty"
people that are invading everywhere--and the Rawlinses, who live a few blocks
away. No one answers when Sal asks about Dean. Finally, Carlo Marx calls and
updates him: Dean has a new girlfriend, Camille, and is running back and forth
from Marylou to Camille, lying and making love to both of them. Dean and Carlo
are having long talking sessions, taking benzedrine, and sometimes going to the
midget auto races. Sal and Carlo go to gather Dean one night (Carlo hides
because Camille doesn't like him, and Dean answers the door nude, being busy
with Camille as always), and go to meet some girls, one of them the waitress Rita
Bettencourt, who Dean has picked for Sal. It becomes a big group party. Sal tried
to take them back to his apartment, but Major won't let them in, so they roam
around downtown. Sal eventually finds himself alone and out of money; he goes
home and sleeps well.
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Sal's old road friend Eddie shows up in Denver too. Dean takes both of them to
the street markets to get jobs. Sal doesn't want to work; he has a free bed, and
Major buys food--all Sal has to do is cook and wash the dishes. There's a big party
at the Rawlinses, then Sal heads to Carlo's. Carlo reads Sal his poem "Denver
Doldrums" in which he describes the Rockies as "papier-mache." Sal stays after
Dean arrives as planned at 4 am, pretending to sleep half the time, through one of
Dean and Carlo's night-long talking sessions. They talk about all the details of
their interactions with each other, with abstract free associations. In the morning,
Sal walks home, watching the mountains turn red as the sun rises.
Sal goes with Major, the Rawlinses and Tim Gray on a trip into the mountains to
Central City, an old mining town now full of tourists. They take over an empty old
miner's shack for the weekend. They start off by going to see the opera, Fidelio.
Sal feels on top of the world. After, they have a huge party at the shack and then
Ray Rawlins, Tim and Sal hit the bars. They see a local character, Denver D. Doll,
going around shaking hands with everyone. Rawlins gets into a fight; they go out
into the street and Sal feels the ghosts of old miners around them everywhere.
Rawlins gets into another fight, insults a waitress, and finally they are thrown
out.
After returning to Denver, Sal finds out that Carlo and Dean were also in Central
City. They didn't know he was there. Dean has set Sal up with Rita Bettencourt
for that evening, and Sal talks her into sleeping with him, but she remains
unimpressed. Sal has decided to go to San Francisco, and makes his rounds
saying goodbye, walking around Denver. More friends arrive in Denver. Sal gets
his shirt back from Eddie. Everyone else is planning to go to San Francisco too.
Sal receives more money from his aunt and leaves on the bus.
Commentary
Now that Sal is with his friends, we see his role among them. In Carlo's
apartment, after Dean and Carlo have been rambling for a while, they ask Sal for
his opinion. He gives a cryptic answer, and when they accuse him of holding
back, he protests that that is simply because he doesn't know what they are trying
to get at. He covers his eyes with his hat and says he is going to sleep, and then
listens in peace. They accept him in his role as observer. Sal says that if they keep
this up they will go crazy, but he wants to know what happens as they go. This is
the most open statement of Sal's desire to "be along for the ride"; all the time he
is living out his dream experiences, he is at the same time recording it all as
material for the very novel we are reading.
There are hints that some of these idealistic visions are facades, and that there is
sadness and disillusionment in the future--as in the past. Carlo Marx's
description of Denver in his poem "Denver Doldrums," quoted by Sal, gives us a
very different perspective of the same place, people and time. The grand Rockies
are "papier-mache"--a collapsible facade, a sham. Central City, the legendary
mining town, is now full of "chichi" tourists--like the Wild West festival in
Cheyenne. Much of what Sal sees are parodies of his vague dreams, sell-out
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spectacles. He enjoys them nonetheless, but is rapidly sated by Denver, wanting
to move to San Francisco quickly. It is as though only movement can keep him
from seeing more deeply, more than he wants to see.
For the first time, too, Sal implies that something of more serious cultural
significance is happening among this group of friends. In Central City, a line from
Fidelio resounds with truth in his mind: "What gloom!" as a baritone rises from a
stage dungeon. He thinks of Dean and Carlo as representatives rising from a
gloomy underground too, "a new beat generation I was slowly joining." Sal is
more reluctant than Dean and Carlo to discuss serious topics. Dean and Carlo ask
him for a conclusion at one point, and he says that the last thing is "what you
can't get," something perhaps too much for anybody to know. Sal makes truthful
observations, but doesn't like to draw conclusions. Carlo, however, accuses him of
being negative. Seen in this way, there is something desperate to Sal's need to
keep moving, to refrain from concluding-- trying as hard as he can to enjoy
something he knows will inevitably end.
Part I, Chapters 11-12
Summary
Sal arrives at his old friend Remi Boncoeur's place in Mill City, a shack in a
housing project outside of San Francisco, and moves in with Remi and Remi's
girlfriend Lee Ann. Remi is delighted to see Sal and has a lot of ideas for him. Sal
writes a screenplay that Remi says he'll sell in Los Angeles, and he starts working
where Remi works, as a nightguard at a barracks for overseas construction
workers. Predictably, Sal is an ineffective security guard. One night, he goes to try
to quiet the men, but ends up drinking with them and hanging the flag upside
down the next morning without noticing. The other cops are hard-core--one of
them likes to tell of his good days at Alcatraz--and are suspicious of Sal and Remi.
On the nights when Sal and Remi work together, they steal groceries from the
barracks cafeteria. Money is tight, but Remi is always full of risky ideas, and they
work together. One day they, with Lee Ann, row out to a rusty freighter and spend
an afternoon there picnicking and sunbathing. Remi is disappointed that the ship
has been stripped by previous thieves, and Sal dreams of the ship's more glorious
days. Sal finds Lee Ann sexy, but keeps his promise to Remi to stay away from
her.
Sal also goes to San Francisco some days, trying and failing to seduce women. He
is starting to get restless again. Relations in the shack are getting frayed. The
screenplay idea failed, Lee Ann and Remi are constantly fighting, money is tight
and Remi loses the last of it at the racetrack. Remi asks the two of them for just
one favor: his stepfather is visiting and he wants to him out, and for Lee Ann and
Sal to at least act like his girlfriend and best friend. Sal is impressed by Remi's
gentlemanliness, but still blows Remi's plans by arriving to the dinner drunk and
late. On top of that, Roland Major shows up drunk and rude. This is the end of
Sal's friendship with Remi. Sal decides to go back East, via Los Angeles and
Texas. On his last day in Mill City, he climbs to the top of a nearby canyon, looks
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over San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean, and reflects about being at the end of
the continent.
Sal walks through Oakland and hitchhikes to Bakersfield. Unable to get more
rides, he gets on a bus for the remaining stretch to L.A., where he sees a small,
pretty Mexican girl. She is sitting across from him on the bus, and he finally
screws up the courage to talk to her: Terry. They tell each other their respective
stories, and decide to stay together in L.A. After they arrive and are eating
breakfast, Sal starts to feel suspicious that Terry is a hustler. After they get to
their hotel room, he feels nervous and acts strange. Terry gets suspicious too and
becomes convinced that Sal is a pimp. Sal pleads with her and then gets angry.
Finally, they both trust each other, and they make love and fall asleep together.
Commentary
Sal's stint in Mill City is a stint in the "real word," a stationary, working, poor
world. Sal enjoys the closely-packed shack community, but he can't handle daily
working and fighting for long. He is still the responsible Sal: he bails Remi out of
a bad situation at one point, and sends most of his earnings to his aunt. But he
doesn't thrive in this situation. Eventually, he cannot resist drinking and ruining
Remi's dinner with his stepfather--the "one last favor" Remi asked of him. He
also tells how he occasionally went to bars, and when approached by a gay man,
would pull his security gun on the man. Sal openly admits that he never
understood why he did that--he knew many gay men already and didn't have
problems with them--but attributes his action to "the loneliness of San Francisco"
and the fact of having a gun and therefore wanting to show it to people.
At the end of the same paragraph, he says that he has to leave San Francisco or
else he will go crazy. Sal's constant movement, viewed in this light, becomes not
just whimsy, but a necessary tactic for survival. Standing on a canyon rim on his
last day in Mill City, looking over San Francisco and toward the ocean, he reflects
that he is at one end of the continent, with nowhere to go but back East. In this
moment, he thinks of the East as "brown and holy," and California as white and
vacuous, empty. It is not so much the places, as his ideas of them, which drive Sal
from one to the other. He craves and thrives on movement and novelty.
Stylistically, the sentences and paragraphs are shorter in the Mill City section,
more narrative and less descriptive. Sal is looking toward L.A.--now L.A., not San
Francisco, not Denver, is the "ragged promised land." He describes himself and
Terry in L.A., after they have made love, as two tired angels. Terry is described in
realistic detail. For the first time, a new Western acquaintance of Sal's is first an
individual, less an epitome of a place or caricature of a region (though there are
still aspects of this: her skin Sal describes as "brown as grapes"--which she and
her family pick for their livelihood). In all of the disappointment and distrust, as
evidenced by Sal and Terry's episode of mutual suspicion, they still attain human
closeness, and Sal was desperate for it. Through shifts in descriptive pace and
detail, Kerouac shows us his narrator maturing, growing in perceptiveness.
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Part I, Chapters 13-14
Summary
Sal is with Terry for the next fifteen days: they want to go to New York together
(Sal envisions her being "his girl" among the group in New York), but Sal only has
twenty dollars. They try to make some money in Los Angeles, without success, so
they decide to hitch to Bakersfield to work picking grapes. In Bakersfield, asking
among the community in Mexican town, there is no work. Terry suggests that
they go to her hometown, Sabinal, where they can at least live in her brother's
garage.
In Sabinal, Sal meets Terry's happy-go-lucky brother Rickey, their friend Ponzo,
and Johnny, Terry's seven-year-old son. They go out drinking together, and then
Sal and Terry, with Johnny too now, stay in a cheap hotel for the night. Everyone
is always talking about manana: tomorrow there will be work, tomorrow things
will be better.
The next morning, Sal, Terry and Johnny go to the vineyards and cotton fields
and rent a tent for a dollar a day. Their neighbors in the next tent are a whole
family of "Okies." Sal goes to work picking cotton; he is slower than the other
workers, and envies their ease and speed. Terry and Rickey help him. He earns
just enough every day to buy basic groceries for his temporary family. For awhile,
he enjoys the roles of husband, father and field laborer; after exhausting days of
work, they spend peaceful evenings under the night sky. It gets too cold for them
to stay, though, so Terry goes back to her family and sets Sal up in a neighbor's
barn. She brings him meals and they make love a few last times, but Sal feels his
life--the East--calling him back. On the road again, they say goodbye. Terry is
resigned. She plans to come to New York next month, but they both know she
won't make it. Sal hitches to Los Angeles, and then gets on the bus to Pittsburgh-as far as he can afford.
He watches the landscape as they pass through the Southwest, feeling an
unidentifiable longing. He meets a girl on the bus, who buys him meals, and they
make out casually until she gets off in Ohio. In Pittsburgh, with no money, Sal
starts hitching. Walking along the road in the Allegheny Mountains, he meets
"the Ghost of the Susquehanna," a senile old walking hobo, and realizes that there
is wilderness in the East too. He hears saxophone blues in a roadhouse and feels
lonely, hungry and tired. He sleeps in the Harrisburg railroad station, and is
thrown out by the station masters in the morning. His final ride is with a stickthin plumbing fixtures salesman who believes in controlled starvation for health.
Sal is starving-the salesman relents and gives him some bread and butter. Sal,
devouring the bread and butter while the salesman does business, starts laughing
at his situation.
The salesman drops him off in New York, and suddenly Sal is back in the hubbub
of Times Square. He has to panhandle for bus fare to Paterson, and people regard
his haggard appearance with suspicion. When he finally gets home, he eats
11
everything in the refrigerator, and his aunt pities how thin he is. It is October,
and Sal is home again. His aunt tells him that Dean came looking for him, and
left only two days ago, for San Francisco--where Camille has just gotten an
apartment. Sal regrets that he didn't look her up when he was there, and that he
missed Dean.
Commentary
In Los Angeles, Sal finds a darker side to his visions of the West--"the loneliest
and most brutal" of cities, "a jungle." Also here, mainstream youth intrude for the
first time in the form of the groups of teenagers in cars, who yell at and make fun
of Sal and Terry. What Sal and Terry have in common is that "anything was all
right: with Sal, and that anything Sal does is all right with Terry. These words are
often repeated in this section. Also, the idea that everyone was in "it" together is
important. Sal, despite all differences of background, feels kinship with Rickey
and Ponzo. None of them accomplish anything: what is there to accomplish? It is
a shared sense of hopelessness, meaninglessness, out of which comes not
bitterness, but a warm fellowship.
Sal speculates that the much repeated promise, manana-meaning "tomorrow"probably means "heaven." This is symbolic of his entire attitude at this time: he
tries to live solely in the present, content with the apparent surface of things. He
can do the motions and suddenly be a laborer, a husband, a father. A telling
moment occurs when Terry asks if Sal wants to make love to her, in the tent with
Johnny there. Sal is concerned about Johnny. Even though Terry says Johnny's
asleep, Sal sees that isn't--but goes ahead anyway. Though Sal is still perceptive
and compassionate, he never resists the course of events. He describes people's
actions clearly, but suspends any judgment-judgment is for manana. Similarly,
Terry is resigned when Sal leaves. They both know that this was temporary,
playing roles, but there is neither malice nor longing. This goes through to the
farewell, Sal says he will see her New York but, even in that moment, they both
know it won't happen. Suspension of judgment--of Dean, his friends, the people
he meets--gives Sal the freedom of perspective necessary to finding joy in his
adventures, if only temporarily.
Landscape, again, is important. In a beautiful passage, Sal looks out of the
window of the bus as they cross the Southwest. He has a book, but "preferred
reading the American landscape: feeling a "mystified" longing. He refers to
disillusionment as the natural path of "nightmare life," describing the day of
disillusionment as the "day of Lystergonians" (a monstrous people encountered
by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey). His tone has matured considerably--not the
child-like exuberance of his journey west, but a slower, melancholy tone, though
just as laden with description. Now it feels as though Sal is still while the
landscape moves around him, not the reverse. This idea is epitomized in a
moment when Sal, broke and tired in New York City, tries to get the nerve to pick
up a cigarette butt to smoke, but is completely inundated by the crowd, and loses
his chance.
12
Part II, Chapters 1-4
Summary
It is Christmas, 1948, and Sal is celebrating the holidays with his Southern
relatives in Testament, Virginia, when Dean arrives on the doorstep with Marylou
and Ed Dunkel. Dean is madder than ever. He left Camille and a new baby
daughter in San Francisco, and with Ed and Galatea Dunkel (a woman Ed
recently married, hoping she would fund their trip--but she was uncooperative,
and they left her in Arizona), zoomed across the country, stopping in Denver
where he hooked up with Marylou again and brought her along. Dean is more
frenetic than ever.
Meanwhile, Sal has been going to school on the G.I. Bill, and met Lucille, whom
he wants to marry. Dean offers to deliver some furniture to Sal's aunt's house for
the relatives: two trips back and forth from Virginia to New Jersey, on the second
bringing Sal's aunt back to New Jersey. Sal joins them; he's on the road again.
After they get to Paterson, Bull Lee calls from New Orleans to tell them that
Galatea Dunkel has arrived there, looking for Ed. Camille calls too. Then they call
Carlo Marx, in Long Island, who comes over. Carlo has spent some time in Dakar
and is quieter, more serious and somewhat disapproving of Dean's reckless
movement.
On the drive back to Virginia, Dean talks continuously, describing to Sal his
newfound mysticism: he believes in God and that everything will work out. What
he says doesn't make any sense, but Sal feels like he understands anyway. They
get back to Testament in the middle of the night, and immediately start out for
New Jersey on the second trip, this time with Sal's aunt and more furniture. Dean
describes to them the details of his new job as a railroad brakeman. Around 4 am,
they are pulled over by a cop and given a speeding ticket, even though Dean was
going only 30 mph at the time. Dean will have to spend the night in jail if they
can't pay the fine; neither Dean nor Sal have any money, so Sal's aunt pays. The
cops are confused: what is a respectable middle-aged lady doing with these
vagrants?
On their way again, Sal tells Dean about a dream he had of "the Shrouded
Traveler": a strange Arabian figure is pursuing him across the desert, and
overtakes him just before he reaches "the Protective City." Dean instantly
identifies the figure as death, and the dream as longing for death. He says he
wouldn't have anything to do with it, and Sal agrees.
Dean and Sal are re-united with their New York friends, and there are big parties
all through the New Year's weekend. Sal brings Lucille to the biggest one; she
doesn't like Dean and Marylou much, or how Sal acts around them. Marylou
starts flirting with Sal to make Lucille jealous, and though Sal won't respond, he
enjoys it. In retaliation, Lucille goes out with Dean to his car, but they just drink
and talk. Bop music playing everywhere, they go from party to party, and then
spend a night at their maniacal friend Rollo Greb's house in Long Island.
13
Dean and Sal go to Birdland to see George Shearing, a blind jazz pianist, play.
The crowd, and Dean, are ecstatic at Shearing's passionate, sweaty performance.
Dean says Shearing is God. After the concert, it is raining. Dean is still awed; Sal
feels crazy and confused, and then realizes that this is probably because of the
marijuana they are smoking.
Commentary
Dean comes back and shakes up Sal's life again, but Sal is slightly more reluctant
this time. He reiterates to Dean his dream of finding a woman to marry and
settling down forever, and adds that "this can't on"--their restlessness. Dean
admires Sal's intentions, but doesn't have the same feelings himself. All of the
men in this section are wronging a woman: Dean has left Camille in San
Francisco with their baby daughter; Ed Dunkel--who will do anything for Dean,
according to Sal--married Galatea for her money, and then ditched her in Tucson;
and Sal, under Dean's influence again, feels his affair with Lucille ending when
she disapproves of his friends. Sal is more sympathetic to women than his
friends-at one point, he repeats something his aunt said, that the world will never
find peace until men beg their women for forgiveness. But he can't seem to follow
through in his actions. When Marylou flirts with him while Lucille is watching, he
enjoys the attention of a "luscious blonde"; he claims that he wouldn't respond,
but he doesn't resist either.
However, in Sal's case, his inability to fall in love is linked with his opinion of
himself; he can't imagine anyone loving him. He says that he has nothing to offer
anyone except for his own confusion; he is fickle, constantly running from one
thing to another.
Sal's group of friends aren't the only ones experiencing this sense of recklessness
and meaningless. In a two-page paragraph (Chapter 4), Sal describes an
enormous New Year's party scene where "everything happened." Rollo Greb is
just as frenetic as Dean is, and doesn't "give a damn about anything." The spirit of
reckless excitement, to Sal, is embodied throughout the novel by the innovative
bop music which is sweeping across the country at this time-- music made of
syncopated beats and constant improvisation.
Now, when Sal is with Dean, the tone often shifts to one with more distance and
perspective, like when Sal recounts his dream of the Shrouded Traveler to Dean.
Dean doesn't want anything to think about death at all--to him, there is only life-and Sal says that he agreed then. He doesn't agree any longer. This more sober,
realistic tone also appears after the George Shearing concert, when Sal feels
"madness" and confusion. Instead of attributing his mood to a greater, abstract
cause, he realizes that it is only because of the marijuana they are smoking.
14
Part II, Chapters 5-7
Summary
Sal prepares for another jaunt West with Dean and friends; he wants to go along
for the ride, and hopes to have an affair with Marylou in San Francisco. Before
they leave, the group stays at Carlo's place for awhile. Carlo tries to ask them all
serious questions about what they are doing (and what they have done to Camille,
Galatea and Lucille), but gets nothing but giggles for answers. Sal comes in every
day and watches the spectacle.
One day, sitting in a bar, a blushing Dean tells Sal he wants Sal to make love to
Marylou while Dean watches. Sal knows that it's because Dean wants to see how
Marylou would be with another man. He agrees, but when all three of them are
lying on the bed together, he can't go through with it. Finally, with Carlo irritated,
his apartment a mess, and Dean and Marylou banged up from fighting with each
other, the group starts on their trip.
They pass through Washington, D.C., on the day of Harry Truman's second-term
inauguration. Ed Dunkel starts driving, and against their instructions, drives
recklessly and they are caught and taken in to a police station. The police are
suspicious of them, but can't do anything more than charge a $25 fine--leaving
them only $15.00 to cross the country. They start picking up hitchhikers to try to
get some gas money. Their first hitchhiker is a scraggly Jewish wanderer, who
claims to find the Torah in the wilderness, their second a sad boy who lies that he
has an aunt who can give them some money.
They pass through South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Dean steals gas when a
station attendant isn't paying attention, and tells them his life story: jumping
freight trains with his drunk father, losing his virginity at nine years old. They
arrive in drowsy Louisiana and go to Bull Lee's house, a dilapidated house on
swampy land outside of town. Jane Lee greets them, high on benzedrine as
always. Eccentric writer-junkie Bull Lee greets Sal courteously; Bull and Jane's
two kids are running around the yard. Sal describes Bull: a "Kansas minister," a
collector of experiences who has worked as an exterminator and traveled around
the world, and now spends most of his time experimenting with his drug habit.
He is the teacher of their group; Sal and Carlo have both learned from him.
Bull asks them questions about themselves that they can't answer--as usual--and
gives them drugs; he considers Dean a madman. Then they go out in New
Orleans, and Bull deliberately takes them to the dullest bars to prove that bars
aren't what they used to be. It's a foggy, ghostly night. They stay up at Bull's
house, everyone with their own project, and Sal goes out, wanting to sit by the
Mississippi River. Unfortunately, he has to content himself with looking at the
river through a fence.
They spend the next morning immersed in Bull's weird life: picking nails out of a
wormy piece of wood, throwing knives at a target, hearing stories of Morocco,
and fighting with his neighbors, and then go to a racetrack, where Bull loses
15
money. Back in Bull's backyard, they compete by showing each other athletic
tricks: Dean is the fastest. Later, in New Orleans, they go to the railyards and hop
on and off freight trains, Dean showing off his brakeman skills.
Ed and Galatea decide to stay in New Orleans. Dean, Sal and Marylou say
goodbye to everyone; they're off to California.
Commentary
It's becoming clearer what Sal has in common with Dean: the ache to be moving,
on the road. After they start west again, Sal mentions a collective euphoria: they
are leaving "confusion and nonsense" behind to perform their only "noble
function": move. The road, to Sal, is "pure" and straightforward as nothing else is
in his life. This desperate desire to move is the one thing that binds Sal and Dean
closer than anyone else in the novel: Even Carlo Marx can't understand what
they're doing. Junkie Bull Lee, who himself leads an exceedingly odd life,
considers Dean a "madman" and advises Sal to get away from him. Sal seems to
understand Dean better than anyone else. Even when he admits that nothing
Dean says makes sense, Sal believes that he understands what Dean means
anyway. Dean seems to also consider Sal some kind of alter ego. They trust each
other so much that he even asks Sal to sleep with Marylou.
Yet, even as Sal's crazy friends look askance at his close association with Dean.
Sal considers everyone and everything he has ever known as "One"--part of the
same collective experience. There is a collective restlessness, desperation and
craziness which leads sometimes to exhilaration. Kerouac constantly uses the
words "sad" and "American" in describing Sal and his friends' experiences, as in:
"our sad drama in the American night"--they represent an entire culture, a time.
When Sal wants to sit by his much-dreamed of Mississippi River, he can't because
there is a fence blocking his access. There is a pervasive sense of something
precious having been lost, a deeper sadness underneath the carousing of their
group. Sal mentions, the night that they cross the ferry in New Orleans, that a girl
committed suicide off the deck. We don't see the tragedy, but we know it
happened; similarly, Sal often mentions a deep sadness, but avoids looking at the
facts that caused it.
Also in this section, we see more evidence of Kerouac's skill at giving a rounded
perspective of Sal and the events. For example, On the Road presents a
phallocentric world, with women as largely replaceable accessories, providing
either sex, nurture or both. Yet, there is often an anti-glorifying spectator, who
allows us to see the men in a less flattering light than they see themselves, as
when Dodie, Bull and Jane's daughter, watches the men show off to each other in
the backyard: "look at the silly men!" she calls to her mother.
16
Part II, Chapters 8-11
Summary
Sal, Dean and Marylou drive through Louisiana and Texas, stealing food,
cigarettes and gas when they can. They see a huge fire in the night, and scare
themselves by driving slowly with the headlights off in a swampy forest. Later, in
pouring rain, Sal driving, they are forced onto the side of the road by a car driving
straight at them. The offending car is full of drunk fieldworkers who want to ask
directions. Sal points the way, then realizes that their car is stuck in the mud. He
wakes Dean up, and they push it out and continue on, wet and covered with mud.
In the day, they pass through snowy ranges and plains. Once, Dean stops and
runs around naked in the sagebrush. He persuades Sal and Marylou to strip as
well, and they drive along naked for awhile, shocking passing truckdrivers.
At dark, they stop at the El Paso travel bureau, hoping to find ride-sharers to chip
in for gas, but with no success. Sal observes Marylou watching Dean with
sadness, anger and love. They drive again, and pick up a quiet boy who promises
them money from his aunt in California. They continue on through the purple
and red mountains of New Mexico, and then Arizona. Sal, who has taken over
driving for awhile, stops to pawn his watch, and they are stopped by another
suspicious policeman--but the policeman is amused by Dean and lets them go. In
Tucson, they stop briefly at Sal's friend Hingham's house to borrow five dollars.
They pick up another hitchhiker: an "Okie" musician whose guitar has been
stolen; he promises them gas money from his brother in Bakersfield. As they pass
a women's prison, he tells them a story about a man who was shot by his wife,
forgave her, and bailed her out of prison, only to be shot again. They pass through
a high mountain pass; on the way down, Dean negotiates the curves in neutral-instructing the others which way to lean--and they make it thirty miles without
using gas.
In Bakersfield, Dean is overwhelmed by memories, telling Sal details of his old
hangouts. Sal tries to tell Dean about being in the railyard with Terry, but Dean is
too excited to listen. They get a few dollars from the musician's brother, and
continue on to the aunt in California. But--coincidentally enough--the boy's aunt
has gone to jail for shooting her husband. They wish the boy well and go on, soon
seeing hilly, beautiful San Francisco, and the ocean beyond. After arriving
downtown, Dean leaves Sal and Marylou in the street and rushes off to Camille.
Marylou and Sal stay in a cheap hotel. Without Dean there, Sal realizes that
Marylou has no interest in him. She goes off with a wealthy man the second
night. Walking through the city alone, Sal experiences a strange moment in which
he imagines a store proprietess to be his disapproving mother from a past life. He
feels a roar in his ears and thinks he feels the presence of numerous past lives, a
sensation of bliss and imminent death--but he makes it back to his room, where
he feels ravenous and describes at length the delectable smells of food in San
Francisco.
17
Dean comes back, and takes Sal to Camille's for a few days. Dean has a new
scheme: selling pressure cookers. Predictably, this doesn't last very long. Sal and
Dean go out with Slim Gaillard, going to long, passionate jazz and blues sessions.
Sal prepares to go home. Dean is back with Marylou again; Sal is sick of them.
The three part, feeling slightly hostile towards each other.
Commentary
Sal's sorrow becomes stronger: farewells aren't the exciting launching points they
were before, but moments of contemplation. Movement--parting and change in
life--is not a choice, but inevitable: the "too crazy world vaulting us." There is
nothing to be done about it but to accept it, and lean toward the next destination.
Sal's views of the landscape also become less euphoric and more contemplative.
Instead of describing definitively, he asks, "what is" the Mississippi? He thinks of
what the river is physically, and where it goes. When they drive through the
South, the landscape parallels Sal's frame of mind at this time: it is mysterious,
dark and deep--even ominous, as when they see the fire at night. There are a lot
of cars parked by the side of the road there. It could be a "fishfry"; it might be
anything else.
In a way, the road is the only place Sal and Dean belong. Both misfits--Dean in
his actions, Sal in his thoughts--the road is where people pass by each other with
tolerance. Or at least disbelief: when Dean is jumping around naked at a
roadstop, Sal mentions that some tourists see him but don't believe it. Dean and
Sal and Marylou can drive naked and shock the truckdrivers, but they never have
to be confronted by more than passing reactions, have to answer for themselves.
On the road, everything might be a mirage, and there are no consequences to
actions (Dean's) or lack of action (Sal).
Also in this section for the first time, Kerouac suggests for the first time that the
women in this story might have deep and complex feelings. He describes Marylou
watching Dean intensely, with an "envious and rueful" love-a surprising
observation of someone who up until now has only been presented as a compliant
bimbo. It suggests that others in this story may be experiencing something quite
different from what Sal describes. (For one woman's perspective of this time, see
Carolyn Cassady's ["Camille's"] memoir, Off the Road.)
Sal's moment standing on the sidewalk in San Francisco, feeling bliss, imminent
death and an awareness of past lives, should be understood in the context of
Kerouac's later interest in Buddhism. Naturally, the ideas of detachment from the
world, solitude and peace appeal to Sal, who is in a kind of spiritual pain, but
these qualities are in direct conflict with the unabashed Hedonism and
impulsiveness that he admires in Dean. Kerouac would continue to struggle with
these conflicting impulses in his later work, and in his life as well.
18
Part III, Chapters 1-4
Summary
In the spring, Sal goes to Denver, working in a wholesale fruit market for awhile
and not liking the hard work. He is lonely; no friends are there anymore. He
wanders around, envying what seems to him to be the simpler, happier lives of
the Denver Mexicans, Japanese and blacks, and imagines Dean and Marylou as
children there. One night, he sits in a crowd at a neighborhood softball game,
with kids of all races, and envies their joy. After, Sal spends the night with a rich
woman he knows, and in the morning she gives him money to go to San
Francisco.
Dean, now living in a house on Russian Hill with Camille, answers Sal's 2-am
knock stark naked as usual. Dean tells what he has been doing: working as a
mechanic and going crazy over Marylou, who has slept around a lot and is now
married to a used-car dealer. At one point, he even wanted to kill either her or
himself. Now, with a hurt hand, he is staying at home taking care of his baby
daughter, who he thinks is wonderful. All this time, Camille is sobbing miserably
upstairs.
In the morning, Dean and Camille have a terrible fight. Sal is uncomfortable and
embarrassed. Camille throws them out, calling Dean a liar and sobbing. On the
street with their luggage, Sal suggests that they go to New York, and then Italy.
Dean realizes for the first time how much Sal cares about him; they feel they
share a common fate, a new closeness, and feel both uncomfortable and joyous.
They see a sunlit Greek wedding party below--they could imagine themselves in
Cyprus at this moment--and then take the cable car down the hill.
They decide "everything": they will stick together, and they also resolve to find
Dean's father, wherever he may be. First, though, they will have two days of fun
in San Francisco. Their friend Roy Johnson chauffeurs them. Sal wants to find
Remi Boncoeur, but he's not in Mill City anymore. They go to see Galatea Dunkel,
who has been left by Ed again. She berates Dean for his lifestyle, and for leaving
Camille and his daughter. The other women glare at him too. Dean just giggles.
Sal defends him, and they go out to a crazy jazz joint, where a tenor saxophone
player plays his heart out and connects with Dean. They go to another jazz place,
where an alto sax player who looks like Carlo Marx makes the whole room shiver
with his playing. They stay out all night carousing, ending by stopping at a new
friend's house. The new friend has a wife who, woken from sleeping, only smiles
and asks no questions: Dean says she is a "real woman." They manage to sleep at
an acquaintance's place. Sal stops by Galatea's (who is nice to Sal but prophesies
doom for Dean) to pick up their luggage. Regretting that he is leaving San
Francisco already, Sal gets a taxi for himself and Dean and they head east again.
Commentary
Ideas of race, which are strong throughout (Sal constantly idealizes the "brown
peoples" as living a simpler, more joyous life) are particularly prevalent when Sal
19
is in Denver this time. He wishes to be black, equating the black world with joy,
"kicks," darkness, music--none of which he can get enough of in his own world.
He wishes to be a Denver Mexican, a "poor overworked Jap," anything but "'a
white man' disillusioned." He blames himself for having "white ambitions"--this
is why he left Terry. But, as he continues strolling through the streets, imagining
Dean and Marylou as children there and stumbling into the happy multi-racial
softball game, it becomes clear that Sal doesn't want to be something or someone
else in particular: he simply does not want to be himself. However, his racial
stereotyping and attitudes are important to pay attention to in the cultural and
historical context of America in the late forties and early fifties (See the Context
section).
Typically, when Sal is on the move again, on his way to San Francisco, he feels
like all of his problems are solved. In San Francisco, though, Dean is not doing so
well. For the first time, Sal has come to him, and after they are both thrown out
by Camille, Dean also needs Sal for the first time. Sal recognizes the moment in
which they are standing on the top of the hill as pivotal: Dean has a new respect
for Sal, and Sal's friendship. Being macho men, they are embarrassed as well as
pleased by their new closeness.
As Sal's perception of things matures, he begins to depict women with more
respect. He feels terrible for Camille, and feels too embarrassed to pass through
her bedroom to use the bathroom while she's crying. He even admits to liking
Galatea Dunkel, and we see by her kindness toward him that she likes him, too.
Dean's powers to please women, meanwhile, are decreasing: when the women
berate him for his behavior to Camille, he can't charm himself out of it. Dean is
broken down at this point, and this is why Sal defends him. Sal believes that the
joy and entertainment Dean has given them all is too precious to discount no
mater how abominably he behaves. This scene, along with others, offers
important glimpses into the women's world which has until now has not been
represented: Sal, noticing a painting of Galatea done by Camille hanging in the
living room, realizes that all the time the men have been running around, the
women have been creating their own world of "loneliness and womanliness."
Another interesting glimpse occurs when Dean tells Sal how Marylou, that "dumb
little box," had the exact same visions of meaning and truth on marijuana that
Dean had had.
Out at night, Sal and Dean see an alto sax player who "is" Carlo Marx, another
man who looks just like Bull Lee. It's as though they are seeing ghosts of people
who are no longer alive; their group has fragmented, a time has passed. Sal, too,
has changed. He leaves with Dean because of real affection, not the devoted
reverence he used to have. If he were deciding for himself only, he would stay
longer in San Francisco. Dean needs him now; perhaps because of this, Sal has
become purposeful and sure of himself for the first time.
20
Part III, Chapters 5-8
Summary
Dean and Sal, scaring the people they are sharing a ride with, talk non- stop in
the backseat about childhood thoughts they had in common, and Dean talks more
about being a child with his drunk bum father. Sometimes Dean would cry for
days when his father was on a binge. Sal and Dean are scornful of the other
people in the car, a thin gay man and a couple, who waste their time worrying,
planning and being afraid. At night, the man hits on Dean unsuccessfully; Dean
tries and fails to get money from him. But he does let Dean drive for a while.
Dean speeds crazily, frightening the others further. When they arrive in Denver,
they drop Sal and Dean off with great relief.
At a restaurant, Dean makes a comment about Sal being older and Sal,
exhausted, snaps at him irritably. Dean walks out, leaving his food untouched.
After he comes back, he tells Sal that he was crying. Sal almost can't believe it,
and then feels awful. Dean says it's okay, and they go to stay with an "Okie"
family, friends of Sal's from his last visit. Dean becomes the most excited Sal has
ever seen him at the prospect of meeting one of his cousins, whom Dean was
close to as a child. The cousin answers Dean's questions about the past, but says
that he is only meeting him to ask Dean to sign papers saying that he and his
father will have nothing to do with the family anymore. After, Sal is sympathetic
and reassures Dean that he, Sal, believes in him even if no one else does. Then
they go to a carnival, and Dean is attracted to a beautiful midget girl but doesn't
have the nerve to talk to her.
Dean gets in trouble with the neighbours for pursuing their pretty daughter. Sal
calms them down, but the mother threatens to shoot Dean if he comes back.
Dean argues with the family they are living with, and Sal gets in trouble with the
cousin of his "woman friend" who thinks he is using her for money and food. At a
bar, Dean goes crazy when a man hits on him, runs out and starts stealing cars
one after another. Finally, in the morning, everything a mess, Dean realizes that
the last car he stole and wrecked was a detective's car, and he and Sal flee on foot
immediately, taking a taxi to a travel bureau. There, a man wants someone to
drive his Cadillac to Chicago; Dean leaps at the chance.
That afternoon, he drives around town and makes love to a waitress he just met-she promises to come to New York. They leave with their passengers--two boys
going to religious school--and immediately Dean breaks the speedometer, going
over 110 miles an hour. Though Sal cautions him when it starts raining, Dean hits
a turn too fast and flips the car into a ditch. While Dean goes to the nearest
farmhouse for help, one of the boys asks Sal if Dean is his brother; Sal says yes.
The farmer hauls them out of the ditch with his tractor. His whole family comes
to watch: the prettiest daughter is a shy "prairie angel" who Sal and Dean can't
stop staring at. Then they stop at Dean's friend Ed Wall's ranch, in the middle of
the dark plains. Ed is wary of Dean now, but he and his wife give them a good
meal before they go on.
21
Commentary
After Dean and Sal are dropped off with their suitcases in Denver, they don't
know where they will go or how they will get there--as usual--but Sal says it
doesn't matter because "the road is life." They thrive on the uncertainties that
plague most people, like the other passengers in their last ride. On that ride, Dean
states that worry is more than a waste of time: it's a "betrayal" of time. This
expresses Dean's general philosophy of life, for which Sal admires him so much;
it is a philosophy of constant action and movement. With Dean, Sal feels this way
too and is freed from the passive pessimism which characterizes much of his time
away from Dean and the road.
Now that Sal has earned Dean's respect, they are on more equal terms, and Sal
reveals more about himself in his actions. Dean too, as Sal understands him
better, becomes more human and less iconic. In the restaurant, Sal snaps at Dean
unreasonably, and we see Dean hurt for the first time. Sal, too, has been cruel for
the first time and feels like a "beast." But he can't even believe at first that Dean
was crying, saying that Dean doesn't "die enough to cry." We see that Sal is made
uncomfortable by deep emotions--he isn't used to having a strong effect on
people. Also, he feels weakened by having revealed an ugly side of himself. He
tells Dean that he doesn't have any close relationships anymore, but also, in
typical Sal fashion, maintains that nothing is his own fault. So Sal is not likely to
change himself. With this revelation of the Sal's character, it is easier to
understand his loneliness, restlessness and depression when he is alone--he
wants to be with people, but at the same time is wary of getting close to them.
This becomes even clearer later when, after seeing the "prairie angel," Sal
comments that a girl like that scares him. He is afraid of falling in love, the most
absolute intimacy, of having the power to hurt or the vulnerability to be hurt.
Still, knowing Dean's vulnerability makes Sal care about him even more. When
Sal, after Dean is effectively disowned by his family, promises Dean that he
believes in him even when nobody else does, they are creating a bond stronger
than the loosening bonds of family and society. While everything else changes,
passes and frays, they can believe in their friendship.
Part III, Chapters 9-11
Summary
Dean speeds across Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois. He tells Sal more stories about when
he was a teenager: running to Los Angeles, stealing cars, falsifying his age to get
work, being in and out of jail, and going to Denver, where he met Marylou, who
was fifteen then. Seeing bums by the side of the railroad tracks makes him think
of his father. He and Sal dream about driving around the whole world in the
Cadillac. When it is day again, Dean is driving so fast and crazily-sometimes
passing six cars at a time-that Sal can't stand it and has to go into the backseat.
Dean gets in a minor accident, bumping the car ahead at 5 mph, and they are
briefly taken in to the police station. Everyone thinks the car is stolen, but they
straighten it out with the owner in Chicago and go on, picking up two hobos on
the way. Illinois small-town people come out to look at them suspiciously when
22
they stop for gas. Sal imagines that they look like a suave gang of California
desperados coming to take on the Chicago gangs. When they get to Chicago, they
have come from Denver in seventeen hours of driving, an average of 70 mph
(Remember, this is 1949!).
They drop off the hobos and the students, clean up a bit, and then hit the jazz
clubs of Chicago. Sal describes the recent history of bop and jazz: Louis
Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Lester Young . . . Now there are all
kinds of types playing in Chicago. They see "God" again--the blind pianist George
Shearing, who gives an awesome performance. They listen to the musicians play
all night. In the morning, everyone staggers home, and Sal and Dean return the
battered Cadillac to the owner's garage, leaving quickly, before anyone sees what
bad shape the car is in.
They take a bus to Detroit. Dean sleeps and Sal talks to a pretty but dull country
girl who tells him joylessly about making popcorn on the porch in the evenings.
In Detroit, low on money, Sal and Dean go to the all-night movies on Skid Row
and watch a cowboy movie and a movie about Istanbul over and over. Sal is dead
asleep for a while, and later Dean tells him that he was almost swept away by the
theater cleaners. Sal speculates on what it would be like if he were swept away
and lost in the garbage. In the morning, after going to some bars and trying to
pick up girls without success, they go to the travel bureau and get a ride to New
York with a nice blond man.
Back in New York, they stay at Sal's aunt's new flat in Long Island. She says Dean
can stay for a few days only. Dean and Sal promise each other to be friends
forever. At a party in New York one night, Dean meets Inez. Shortly, he wants to
divorce Camille and marry Inez. A few months later, Camille gives birth to Dean's
second baby, and then Inez has a baby too. Dean is penniless and busy with his
usual joys and troubles, so he and Sal don't go on to Italy after all.
Commentary
As the road represents the thrill of movement, the car represents Sal and Dean's
dream of freedom; Dean imagines that they could drive anywhere in the world.
Sal says that Dean's "soul" is wrapped up in a car, a coast to reach, and a woman
at the end of the road. It is an exhilaration of anonymity and ambiguity, fueled
not by wandering aimlessly, but by the idea of speeding toward a new future: an
ideal woman waiting, a place where all of their problems will be magically solved.
Everything, include themselves, can be remade while on the road. Just as they
can imagine their destination to be ideal, they can act as their ideal selves. Sal
loves picturing Dean and himself as desperados, California outlaws. To the people
they pass, they could be anyone. Whenever they get to the end of the road and
can't go any further--hitting the Pacific or the Atlantic--they have to face the
specifics of their lives, and often feel at a loss to do so.
Jazz, exploding across the country at this time, figures prominently in their night
in Chicago. To Sal, the sound of a saxophone is as "lonely as America." The music
23
embodies Sal and Dean's thoughts and emotions: eruptions of sound both joyous
and melancholy, frenetic and slow, improvised solos. They are voices from the
fringe speaking for a new era, apart from the old structures. Melodies are found
and lost, found again, and lost again.
On the bus to Detroit, it becomes clear that that Sal is not speaking just for
himself and Dean, but for a whole time and generation. The country girl he talks
to on the bus, like everyone else, doesn't know what she wants. In Detroit, in the
seedy all-night theater, they are surrounded by people who have "nothing to do,
nowhere to go, nobody to believe in." Sal's sense of spiritual malaise seems to be a
product of an entire culture.
Part IV, Chapters 1-3
Summary
It's restless spring again. Sal has some money from selling his book to a
publisher, and decides to go West again. For the first time, he will leave Dean in
New York and go alone. Dean now is working hard in a parking lot to support
both Inez and pay child support to Camille. He and Sal have been going to a lot of
parties, but Dean has gotten quieter; he doesn't really fit in New York. One night
they stand on the street in the rain at 3 am, talking, and Dean tells Sal that he got
a letter from his father--who is in jail in Seattle--for the first time in years. He
wants his father to come to New York. Another afternoon, they watch a baseball
game on TV, then play basketball with some kids. They play hard but are easily
beaten by the younger boys. Then they have dinner with Sal's aunt, and Dean
surprises her by returning the fifteen dollars she paid for his speeding ticket.
After, Dean shows Sal a picture of Camille and the new baby and some other
pictures, and Sal is surprised by how orderly their lives look in the pictures; their
children, looking at these pictures in the future, won't realize what a mess their
parents' lives were. Dean and Sal say goodbye, each feeling lonely.
On the bus, going through the Midwest, Sal meets Henry Glass, a twenty-year-old
who has just been released from jail. He reminds Sal of Dean, though without
Dean's frenetic joy, and Sal watches out for him, making sure he doesn't get into
more trouble, until he gets to his brother's in Denver. The old Denver crowd is
around this time, and Sal has a good time talking, going to bars and sitting in
Babe Rawlins' backyard with Tim Gray and Stan Shephard. Stan has heard Sal is
going to Mexico, and wants to go with him. They are getting ready to go when
Denver Doll calls to tell Sal that Dean has bought a car and is coming to join him.
Sal knows that this means Dean has gone crazy again.
Dean arrives in Denver like a whirlwind. His official reason to go to Mexico is to
get his divorce processed there; it's supposed to be faster. They have a great day
and night drinking and partying with all of their friends. The next afternoon,
Stan's grandfather pleads with them not to take Stan to Mexico, and asks Stan not
to go, but Stan won't listen. They say goodbye to their friends and head south, Sal
24
looking back to watch Tim Gray standing alone on the plain until he recedes into
the distance.
Commentary
Stylistically, the novel has changed. Instead of the long, rambling sentences of the
earlier trips west, the descriptions of the landscape are now short, imagistic
fragments. It is an "endless poem"; the feeling conjures more space to breathe
and to think.
The style mirrors Sal's mindset: in Denver this time, he is happier and calmer
than he has ever been. He says that the whole world has opened up because he
has no dreams anymore. Looking back on his pattern of running from one
fallacious dream to another ("running from one falling star to another" [Part II,
Chapter 4]), being disappointed by the reality each time, this is not necessarily a
bad thing. Naturally, Dean comes to disturb Sal's newfound balance. Sal's
reaction now is closer to other people's; instead of his old excitement, he feels
grim and a little apprehensive about what will happen when Dean comes. He is
starting to feel that Dean takes up an undue amount of time and space in his life.
Still, he is the one who understands Dean best, and he welcomes Dean's company
on the trip to Mexico. Immediately, in Dean's presence, a new dream
materializes: that of the "magic South." They have exhausted East to West, so the
answers must lie in another direction, another country entirely.
The idea of family--or lack of it--has been looming. Dean is constantly looking for
his father, but except for one letter in many years, has no idea where he is. In that
letter, he finds out that he has a sister he didn't know about--but the father
doesn't know where she is. Sal's father is dead; his only family is his aunt, who
cares for him but cannot play the guiding role of a parent. Sal points out that Stan
also has a father problem: his father seems to also be absent, and he is running
from his controlling grandfather. Now these three are going to Mexico together. If
these three are rootless, it is because they have literally lost their roots: their
parents. They have had no choice but to make their own way.
Part IV, Chapters 4-5
Summary
Only a few hours out of Denver, a flying bug bites Stan, and his arm swells
horribly. Sal thinks it's a bad omen. They continue south, through Colorado, New
Mexico, and to big, sinister Texas, stopping in San Antonio to take Stan to a clinic
(he gets a shot of penicillin). The Mexican girls there remind Sal of Terry, and he
wonders what she's doing now. They then go shoot some pool, and watch a
deformed midget who is the butt of everyone's jokes, but seems to be loved by
them nonetheless. Finally, feeling ill from so much driving, they cross the seedy
border town of Laredo and the bridge over the Rio Grande River into Nuevo
Laredo, Mexico. Immediately, their spirits lift; it looks exactly like what they
imagined. Dean is delighted by the Mexican border officials, who are grinning,
relaxed and careless. They change most of their money into pesos.
25
They pass through the town of Sabinas Hidalgo, the Monterrey mountains, and
then down to hotter Montemorelos, and then into a swamp area, staring at the
people they see from the road. Dean is moved by them; Sal thinks it's because
they are like him, moved by simpler, more "primitive" instincts. Sal takes over
driving, through "hot flat swamp country" to Gregoria, where he stops to talk to a
man by the side of the road. Victor is selling windshield screens, but Sal jokingly
asks if they can buy some girls. Victor says yes. Dean wakes up, excited, and asks
if Victor can also get them marijuana. Victor takes them to the adobe shack where
his large family lives, and his mother picks some marijuana from the garden for
them. They smoke it, with Victor and his many brothers, and get extremely
stoned. They all talk about each other, neither side understanding anything, but
everyone is in a good mood.
In the car again, Sal has a moment in which he thinks that Dean looks exactly like
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and then like God. Victor takes them to meet his wife
and baby--who, in their high state, looks to them like the most beautiful baby
ever. They then proceed to the whorehouse, a dance hall with a jukebox blaring
mambo music louder than anything they have ever heard. They start dancing and
drinking and going to bed with the girls, who are mostly teenagers. There is a
drunk eighteen-year-old Venezuelan and a beautiful sixteen-year-old black girl
that Sal wants, but he sees her mother come down to talk to her and then is too
ashamed to approach her.
Sal goes to bed with an older prostitute, and then continues dancing and
drinking. Dean is so out of it that he can't even recognize Sal. Sal is still high too,
and feels for those few hours totally in love with the sixteen-year-old. She has a
dignity that makes everyone keep a distance from her. Finally, everyone giddy
and drunk, the girls bid them goodbye. Victor takes them to a bathhouse next to a
playground on the highway, and they bathe and feel much refreshed. Dean likes
Victor and tries to convince him to return to the States with them. Victor is sad to
see them leave but refuses politely; he has a wife and child, he says. They leave
Victor standing in front of the playground in the red dusk.
Commentary
In Mexico, Sal and Dean find a place that looks exactly like what they imagined;
finally, the reality matches their dream. It is to them the "magic land" at the end
of all the roads they have been on, and they refuse to see it as anything but that. It
is especially clear, now in a foreign land, how thoroughly fixed in Sal's perspective
we are. He even records the speech of the Mexican officials phonetically
("Mehico"-the Spanish pronunciation of "Mexico") so we hear them speak with
Sal's firmly American, English ear. Dean calls the people they see by the side of
the road "straight and good," and Sal describes their "pure activities." Sal thinks
these people are like Dean--but actually, neither Sal nor Dean really know
anything about them.
Sal completely idealizes "the other," lumping all non-white peoples into the same
idea: in Mexico, they see: "Hongkong humanity," "Algerian streets," and "Arabian
26
paradise." He feels that finally, they can learn something basic about life from the
true "Indian" people. Yet, all they do in Mexico are the same things they do in the
United States: get high, drink, and chase after girls.
Sal is constantly attracted to the same type of woman: aloof, beautiful, and
ultimately untouchable, and in Gregoria, she is the sixteen-year-old black
prostitute. Even in the most debaucherous circumstances, Sal always hangs onto
a thread of conscience and compassion, often signified by the presence of the
beautiful, untouchable woman. Even though he lusts after the teenage girls, he
only goes to bed with a thirty-year-old prostitute. He is too ashamed to even
approach the sixteen-year-old.
Victor is the first man to refuse Dean's attempt to lure him onto the road. His
moral obligations to his wife and child are clear to him. Perhaps it is Victor, not
the people by the side of the road, who represents the morality Sal is in search of,
a morality foreign to Dean's world.
Part IV, Chapter 6 - Part V
Summary
After leaving Gregoria, they drive through a jungle with "snaky" trees a hundred
feet tall. The headlights are broken and they have to proceed in the dark.
Realizing that Stan is still high makes them laugh and they feel better. They are
exhausted, so in the tiny town of Limon, they park the car by the side of the road
and sleep, Dean and Stan on the road and Sal on top of the car. It is extremely hot
and humid, and the air is full of insects, especially mosquitoes, which keep
dropping on them. A sheriff on horseback comes by in the middle of the night,
but only to check that everything is all right; Sal feels that he is a kind guardian of
the town. In the middle of the night, like a dream, a white horse dragging a cart
comes galloping down the road directly towards Dean, but Sal is confident that
the horse won't trample him--and it doesn't.
In the morning, caked with dead bugs, they drive on. The country changes. The
indigenous people here are shorter, darker, and stranger to them. They stop on a
Sierra Madre mountain peak and look at a three-year-old Indian girl. Dean
speculates that all her life, she will know no place but that particular ledge of that
particular mountain. They feel their differences strongly. Continuing on, a group
of Indian girls selling rock crystals surround the car. They are very young but look
old. Dean, being especially kind to one of them, gives her a wristwatch for a small
crystal. The girls follow the car as far as they can. They pass through more
mountains, a plateau, and then, from the next mountain pass, see the huge
sprawl of Mexico City.
Vast, wild, packed with people and ceaseless movement, Mexico City feels to
them like the true end of their travels. They walk through the streets "in a frenzy
and a dream," Sal describing everything he sees. Then Sal gets dysentery and a
fever so bad that he becomes delirious and unconscious. A few days later, he
27
wakes to Dean telling him that he has gotten his divorce and that he is driving
back to New York immediately, Stan will take care of Sal. When he gets better Sal
realizes what a jerk Dean is, but he understands too that it's just the way he is.
In the concluding section, Sal relates that Dean made it to Louisiana before the
car fell apart, and got money from Inez to fly the rest of the way. Once in New
York, he reassured Inez about the divorce, then got on a bus to San Francisco and
went back to Camille. Sal, back in New York now, has met Laura, the kind of
woman he was looking for this whole time. When Dean hears that they are
planning to move to San Francisco, he says he will come get them himself, except
he comes five weeks early. Dean is barely coherent now, not speaking very much.
The visit is rushed, and when they part, Sal has to leave Dean standing on a street
corner alone (Sal and Laura are going out with Remi Boncoeur, who, due to past
experience, has no patience for Sal's friends). Dean takes the train back to San
Francisco; Sal and Laura can't go yet. Sal doesn't know what Dean came for this
time, except to see him.
When the sun goes down, and Sal looks over the river to New Jersey, and
imagines the vast stretches of land beyond, he thinks of Dean continually.
Commentary
Mexico City is the end of Sal and Dean's restless wanderings together. Past
Gregoria, they have gotten out of their element. They no longer feel an allembracing humanity with the people they see, but discomfort and difference. The
alien-ness of the places forces Sal to observe clearly, objectively, and the
descriptions in this section, free from his usual biases, are quite vivid. The air in
the Limon jungle has an "unimaginable" softness, and life is "dense, dark and
ancient", observations with more depth than his earlier descriptions (of life
"pure," "primitive"). Dean commented earlier that he did not drive the road in
Mexico, the road drove him, and indeed they are at the mercy of the landscape.
The headlights don't work, and then, lying in the humidity and heat and bugs, Sal
has a sensation of becoming part of the atmosphere.
The dream and romance of the road has gone and been replaced with something
deeper, darker and more complex. Dean doesn't stick around for that, and leaves
Sal sick in Mexico City, making Sal realize once and for all the limits of their
friendship. In the end, their positions have changed. Sal is strong, confident, in
love, and Dean is incoherent and lost. Still, he loves Dean. Dean is the falling star
Sal was chasing; Sal will always remember and value the star at its apex, when it
presided over a whole world.
Study Questions
 Is Dean a hero, a failure, or both?
To everyone except for Sal, Dean is a failure. On the Road is Sal's story, though,
and his attempt to make everyone else understand in what way Dean is a hero. In
fact, to Sal, Dean is more than a hero: Sal sees something saintlike about Dean,
and doesn't think that Dean's moral flaws conflict with this. On one occasion, he
28
refers to Dean as the "HOLY GOOF"; on many occasions, he speaks of Dean as an
angel terrifying in his energy. Sal knows Dean's flaws but seeks to celebrate his
talents, to Sal, the most precious being his passionate relish for life, his capacity
for great joy, and to give joy to his friends.
 What is Sal's attitude toward America?
He loves his homeland, especially the grandeur of its landscape, the variety of its
people. But it is changing, and he is disappointed by the change at times, like
when he tries to sit on the banks of the Mississippi River and is stymied by a
chain-link fence. There is also a darker side to its vastness which he
acknowledges. There seem to be two sides to everything. The vast emptiness of
the American West can either fill the spirit and be the epitome of loneliness. On
one side is Terry, the pretty Hispanic worker Sal spends a couple weeks with in
California, and on the other are the suburban teenagers who shout at her from
their cars. There is Dean, who Sal thinks of as the spirit of the West, and the
suspicious policemen with power complexes who eternally pursue him. Sal's
dreams of America are both realized and parodied, as in his first trip to the West,
when he is happy to see real cowboys, but also sees the hokey Wild West festival
in Cheyenne, and the tourist town of Central City. All the gold that was mined out
of Central City is being returned to it in the form of tourist dollars. It is an
America which is still plagued by class and racial divides, but changing rapidly.

What is Sal's idea of the West compared to his idea of the East? Does this
change during the course of the novel?
At first, Sal thinks of the East as intellectual, wrapped in the old, stultifying, and
the West as open, uninhibited, and new. Similarly, he is bored with his Eastern
intellectual friends and infatuated with Dean, the free Western spirit. However,
as he travels west and is lonely in Los Angeles, he sees the East as "brown and
holy" and the West as whitewashed, empty; it all depends on his emotional state.





How is On the Road written that is different from earlier, more traditional
novels? What kind of effect on does this have on traditional plot? Does the
form help to express the themes of the novel?
Discuss the theme of race in the novel. Is Sal prejudiced?
Discuss the women in On the Road. What kind of problems do Sal and
Dean have with women, and how does this affect their actions?
Is Sal an honest narrator? Are there any inconsistencies in his narration?
If so, what effect do they have on the story?
Discuss the theme of jazz music in On the Road. How does jazz music
relate to the novel thematically? Formally?
Bibliography
Cassady, Carolyn. Off the Road. New York: W. Morrow, 1990.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Penguin, 1976.
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