I shambled after as Ive been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me as the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes, ‘Awwwww! ‘”(5-6) Dean Moriarty is the mad man Sal has been looking for, and it is because of him that Sal begins his life on the road.
For him, Dean is the perfect guy for the road because he actually was born on the road. On The Road begins with Sal Paradise, a beatnik traveler, looking for something more in his life than the tedious life he lives. The hero that rescues him from the endless routine cycle he lives in is Dean Moriarty, a holy- conman full of energy and enthusiasm for life; a mad man. Sal is stuck in New York while his friends and the infamous Dean Moriarty are in Denver. And so, in search of his friends and adventure, Sal commences his life on the road traveling in search for everything and for nothing.
In total, Sal journeys through the vast continent of America in four trips; from east to west, from west to east, from west to south towards Mexico and north again. Their travels took them all over the United States on escapades full of sex, drugs, and jazz music. Throughout their travels they encounter several people with whom they become attached to in one way or another. Sal is overwhelmed by the beauty in everyone and begins to see the real America; the America personified in its people.
Sal described the people he meets in his journeys to the totality superlative extent of their character; in a way, they all became part of the experience and they all had a place in the story to be told. Sal meets numerous characters in his journeys. He befriended a hobo called Eddie just because he needed someone to be with. In search for transport rode an empty truck with several colorful characters. I looked at the company. There were two young framer boys from North Dakota is red baseball caps, which is the North Dakota framer-boy hat, and they were headed for the harvest; their old men had given them leave to hit the road doe a summer.
There were two young city boys from Columbus, Ohio, high-school football players, chewing gum, winking, singing in the breeze and they said they were hitchhiking around the Unites States for the summer. Were going to LA! they yelled. Finally there were Mississippi Gene and his charge. Mississippi Gene was a little dark guy who rode fright trains around the country, a thirty-year-old hobo but with a youthful look so you couldnt tell exactly what age he was. (22-23) He fell in love with a Mexican woman called Terry and ended up picking cotton to earn money.
Little by little, as Sal and Dean become closer, Sal started to separate from his close gang constituted of several beatniks, Carlo Marx, Chad King, Tim Gray, and Roland Major. Deans intelligence was every bit as formal and shining and complete, without the tedious intellectualness. And as his criminality was not something that sulked and sneered; it was a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy; it was Western, the west wind, and ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied, long a-coming (7-8) Dean was the rebel.
The black-sheep no-good zealous adventurous friend Sal needed to push him into the life on the road. Dean meets numerous women, three whom he loves dearly and marries. Although the women had knowledge of Deans infidelity, they continued to sustain a relationship with him and in the end he impregnated several of them. He divorces and remarries till finally he ended up remarrying his second wife, Camille, with whom he was determined to remain. Sal and Dean manage to work their way across the country three times with little money.
They get by with the help and money of others. Dean and Sal begin to long for so much more than the US. They plan to go to Italy, but they fail and so they decide to leave for Mexico and experience more of the world. As they begin to make their way towards Mexico City, they realize the cops are much nicer and less suspicious and to them it is like a whole different world. Cut off from technology, poor, hot, and not knowing any better, Dean and Sal fall for the Mexican way of life way. The Mexican girls appeal to them greatly.
Sal is amazed with the girls innocence and young age, so much he cannot have any sexual relations with them. There was, however, a girl in the whorehouse that stood above all the whores in there. I couldnt take my eyes off the little dark girl and the way, like a queen, she walked around and was even reduced to the sullen bartender to menial tasks such as bringing us drinks and seeping the back. Of all the girls in there she needed the money most; maybe her mother had come to get money from her for her little infant sisters and brothers. Mexicans are poor.
It never, never occurred to me just to approach her and give her some money. I have a feeling she would have taken it with a degree of scorn, and scorn from the likes of her made me flinch. In my madness I was actually in love with her for the few hours it all lasted; it was the same unmistakable ache and stab across the mind, the same sighs, the same pain, and above all the same reluctance and fear to approach. Strange that Dean and Stan also failed to approach her; her unimpeachable dignity was the thing that made her poor in a wild old whorehouse, and think of that.
At one point I saw Dean leaning like a statue toward her, ready to fly, and befuddlement cross his face as she glanced coolly and imperiously his way and she stopped rubbing his belly and gapes and finally bowed his head. For she was the queen. (288-289) Sal became feverish. A few days later, he woke to Dean telling him that he had gotten his divorce, that he was driving back to New York immediately, and that Stan will take care of him. When he got better, Sal realized what a jerk Dean was, but then he understands Dean had always been like that.
Sal is left with the only option but to make his way back to New York. Sal meets Laura, the girl he was looking for. Sal and Laura plan to move to San Francisco and Dean said hell go for them personally, but he arrived five weeks early. Dean was barely coherent now, not speaking very much. The visit was rushed because Laura and Remi Boncoeur, Sals friend, didnt like Dean much and planed on going to a Duke Ellington concert that night at the Metropolitan Opera. Sal hoped not to damage his relationship with Laura and Remi, and so drove off with them, waving to Dean from the car window, never to hear from him again.
Sal didnt know what Dean came for this time, except to see him. Sal traveled north and south, east to west and yet he wasnt satisfied. He founds himself lost in all his travels. I didnt know who I was I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room Id never seen, hearing the his of stream outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didnt know who I was for about fifteen strange second.
I wasnt scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger and my whole life was a hunted life, the life of a ghost. (15) He was in search of something to make his life worthwhile; something that would give meaning to his life. His journeys showed him that it doesn’t help to run away from life, but face it. In the end, he founds his treasure: the reality of a sedentary life and the companionship of a good woman. Sal was afraid to face reality. He was awed at the lifestyle Dean had and quickly picked it up. However, he didnt allow himself be disappointed.
He was constantly running away from disappointment. The promised land first was Denver. When Denver turned out to be the not-so-promised land he fled to San Francisco and from San Francisco to L. A. He was constantly in search for the new, for the non-common. He rejected all types of society standards including the politically correct life he was supposed to live and so defies all the rules. He lived a wild life on the road when he was supposed to be at home writing. Those who were different from the mold awed him. He rejected the middle-American society that seemed too perfect to be dull.
He was eager to live and experience everything, yet he tried to find his experiences in the mad ones. He was in search of meaning to his life and he thought he would find it in the west. the east of my youth and the West of my future. In this picaresque novel, Kerouac writes an ingenious novel about birth, death, and most importantly living. Kerouac is able to capture the bewilderment and craziness of the post war period. Like his character Sal, everyone else also felt a sense of unreality and uncertainty. People in real life America were too looking for a sense of belonging.
Jack Kerouac uses this novel to lively portray this period full of confusion. Kerouac details everything that his characters see and experience, emphasizing on the little things. This books base is the careful managing of details; the little details that can pin down the feeling he is trying to get across. Kerouac always describes the setting. The place itself has sometimes more importance than the actions happening. An example of this is when Sal was picking up cotton and the fact that he was picking cotton wasnt the important, but how beautiful it was. We bent down and began picking cotton.
It was beautiful. Across the field were the tents and beyond them the sere brown cornfields that stretched out of sight to the brown arroyo foothills and then the snow-capped Sierras in the blue morning air. “(96) On the Road was written in a very easy to read manner. There was no difficult language in it, although a lot of the slang terms and phrases corresponding to the period. This book is a travel through time, in which you can see and live the America in the post war period; the America Jack Kerouac lived. Kerouac often writes using run- on sentences that convey the feeling of constant motion.
As the Cab honked outside and the kids cried and the dogs barked and Dean danced with Frankie I yelled every conceivable curse I could think over that phone and added all kinds of new ones and in my drunken frenzy I told everybody over the phone to go to hell ad slammed it down and went out to get drunk. (221) An interesting scene is when he cant get quite started on his trip. In the beginning he believes he can take one straight line across the US, but he soon realizes that couldnt be possible for nothing in life follows a straight line.
In the beginning, he wants life to be like that red line across the map, straight, safe, and coherent. Later he discovered nothing is as easy as a straight red line on a map. The interesting thing is that he cant get started in what ended up the biggest adventure in his life and for an entire day he traveled north instead of west. He was lost and the only thing he knew was to meet that red line on the map to get started. In the beginning he was following the rules. What better rule than that of a straight line?
I wanted to go west and here Ive been all day and into the night going up and down, north and south, like something that cant get started. (11) If you drop a rose in the Hudson River at its mysterious source in the Adirondacks, think of all the places it journeys by as it goes out to sea forever- think of that wonderful Hudson Valley. (10) He was that traveling rose. He threw himself in the Hudson River in search of adventures. He wanted to feel everything that could be felt. He was in search of life through experience. Yet, he didnt know what he was looking for until the end.
