What Does Sal Want?

       Sal is an observer, I think this is something we have agreed upon. He exists to observe and to allow Kerouac to describe the setting in the way he wishes. Up to now, that is essentially Sal’s purpose in the novel. It's never explicitly stated but I think we can presume that Sal is human, and being a human he has desires... right? Doesn't he? He must... right? 

       Then what are they? What does Sal care about? I want to say he has a desire to write but it seems that staring at Dean is more important than writing. The only real interest he has shown is in women, and in showing that interest he tends to be a pretty sexist dude. Most recently we see Sal get close to Terry and jumps to saying that she is his, seeing as she is the girl he is closest to at the time. I could get in to how sexist Sal is in this instance in particular but I think I've explained my view that this is representative of the setting more than anything, and plus I think Meagan will have mentioned it for me already. The point here is that not only do I think Sal hasn't really been characterized enough, I barely consider him a character anymore. I see no motivations in him- no desire- nothing. 

       Anyways, I just wish the novel would spend less time “on the road” and more time in the character’s minds. Well no, in Dean’s mind, because Dean is all in this novel in comparison to Sal. The few hopes that I have left in Kerouac to make Sal a more interesting character are slowly beginning to shatter. In my opinion, it must be only a matter of time before Sal has some sort of experience that changes the novel entirely. I must admit, however, that I do enjoy watching Sal fail in becoming more like Dean. Other than being amusing, Sal’s character is just constantly getting wrecked for different reasons which is one of my favorite parts of the novel. I just want to jump to Dean so I can read about a bank robbery or some shit rather than the Adventures of Sal or Lack Thereof.

America

      When I first started reading On the Road I thought the novel was going to be about an amazing, life-changing journey across the United States. Although Sal's narration and description of the setting around him have been beautiful, he hasn’t changed much. Although Sal is physically on a journey, mentally he has stayed in the same place the entire time. 

      Sal is not a narrator who decidedly gives his own opinion, but does give amazing descriptions of the settings around him, from which a lot can be interpreted. But what I have not been able to infer from Sal’s narration is whether or not a he actually likes America. What I have noticed the most in Sal’s narration is that it is when he is traveling and away from his friends, and never in one place for too long, that he seems to be in love with the U.S. But during the sections of the novel that we have read so far, it is when he is staying with his friends that he is most unhappy, the sections of the novel such as the time he has spent in Colorado and Mill City. During his time in Mill City he claims at one point that he has begun “to realize that everyone in America is a natural born thief". But during the time he is travelling from Mill City to L.A. he describes the “Magic names of the valley” unrolling around him. He has this fascination with America, and it is understandable, being that it is only one country encompassing the cultures of many. And yet there are similar characteristics among every one of the characters that he has described in the novel. I believe that Sal understands this, that even though he is three thousand miles away from his home, there is still the element of being American that connect those such as Remi and Dean to those like his Aunt and he understands that this is neither good nor bad.

      Sal has a ridiculous ability to accept almost anything, from his living conditions to those with whom he decides to become friends with. This is also evident in his lust for every female he runs into, lust he describes as “A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl who I loved”(pg. 82).

Disappointment

     This week my perspective on the novel transitioned dramatically. At first, I admired Sal’s child like spirit. His innocent dreams of exploring the “promised land” rejuvenated the meaning of life and was a nice shift from Atlas Shrugged. His vision of the people and places that surrounded his made Earth seem like a real live heaven through his use of adjectives. All objects that he observed were incredible, the sweetest, and the best. I even took compassion with that naiveness that he possesses because his righteous dreams were one in a million.

      Reading the next two chapters pained me. In the narrative, Sal becomes an old miserable drunk who cannot take care of himself, let a lone a family whom he comes to adopt as to fulfill his longing for a sense of closeness. His constant moving from the east to the west, and now from the west to the south represents his idea that the world is a stale, disgusting, and dull place to live. He is under the belief that place creates all his troubles, when in reality, it is Sal that morphs his surroundings, and therefore destroys place. There is one common factor that Sal has yet to realize is the source of all his troubles. Sal destroys himself through his constant restlessness, anxiety, and tendency to turn to substances like alcohol and drugs to ease the pain. As they are only temporary tools of medication, Sal needs to learn to face his problems head on rather than continue to move and hitch hike from one location to the next.

      The most pathetic scene as of yet is when he decides to go back to New York, the place he hated most. Eastern values at first for Sal included analytical, static, and critical ideas whereas Western values symbolized wild exuberance. However, the values of geography have not changed in the short amount of time that Sal has journeyed, but rather, Sal mistakenly believes that maybe the East can once again provide him with the ‘exuberance’ that he hoped to west could instill in him.

      No longer to I have any sympathy for Sal’s character. Once an innocent dreamer, to now becoming a helpless fool I feel as if On The Road is taking a turn for the worse. I do hope that Sal’s once naive personality takes hold of his body once again because as of right now, there is no Salvation for his character in my eyes.

“We got off the bus at Main Street, which was no different from where you get off a bus in Kansas City or Chicago or Boston- red brick, dirty characters drifting by, trolleys grating in the hopeless dawn, the whorey smell of a big city” (Meagan Adler)

        In this week’s reading, I found myself almost bothered by Sal’s mundanely dull journey that continuously seems to have no purpose; Sal’s innocent naivety defines his malleable character, which gradually molds him into a dispirited “haggard ghost” (pg.76) in his lonely “sad and ragged” (pg.77) life.  Furthermore, as we are exposed to his relationship with Terry, we begin to question the genuineness of his so- called love; does he have true feelings for Terry or does he persuade her in a time of desperate vulnerability to accompany him in one of the “loneliest and most brutal of American cities” (pg.79)?  Sal augments our dubious thoughts on the authenticity of this love when he says, “A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world” (pg.74).  In my opinion, Sal needs to find himself and a purpose to his presently purposeless journey in order to find his true love.  As we follow Sal into the “grapy dusk” (pg. 72) of California, we realize that he aimlessly wonders through a continuous cycle of blissful happiness and hopeless dejection.  As he looks up at the “dark sky” (pg.89) he is painstakingly reminded that he has been a failure to himself in his journey, for he remains a nobody. Sal is at that awkward point in life where he is no longer a dependent high school boy but also not an adult.  He is trying to transition into this unknown person he so desperately longs to be, but is still dependent on people like his aunt for money because he continues to be an idle and purposeless boy.  Apart from its geographically distinct persona, is the west really so different from Sal’s life in the east?  We see points where Sal questions his own decision to take this journey on the road and begins to undermine his future as a hopeless wanderer; he says, “We got off the bus at Main Street, which was no different from where you get off a bus in Kansas City or Chicago or Boston- red brick, dirty characters drifting by, trolleys grating in the hopeless dawn, the whorey smell of a big city” (pg.76).  In making these somewhat insightful broad generalizations Sal has moments where he sees the mundanely dull journey that has yet to change him.  Constantly finding himself back on the never-ending “bloody rood” (pg.90), Sal undeterminably begins his journey back home, where his mundane life will continue to define him as a complacently dull nobody.    

My Prediction

Firstly, I would like to comment on the fact that it was difficult to remember the events of the past readings because of how long it had been since our last posts. Furthermore, after reviewing the previous posts and what we had discussed, I must say that I was surprised with what unfolded in Chapter 11. Prior to the reading, I expected a greater focus on one of the main characters. I expected Jack Kerouac to make use of either Sal or Dean in an effort to create more development in the novel. However, I was evidently mistaken as the novel plays on with just more time “on the road”. To continue, although Kerouac arguably characterizes Sal to a greater extent in this chapter, I believe that the novel still revolves around the concept of hitchhiking and reaching the west. 

As I already suggested to Felipe, I believe that the novel (according to its title) will continue to take place “on the road”. In other words, as of now I believe that the central focus in the novel will be the journey rather than any specific character. In addition, I no longer think that Kerouac will manipulate any of the characters in an attempt to communicate the theme to his audience. Instead, I believe that the point of the novel might just be to characterize the personality of the country. Perhaps the author is using the personification of the country as a tool to illustrate the fascinating aspects of society. To conclude, I look forward to what the next reading of On the Road has to offer and whether or not my prediction will be supported.

Loneliness of San Francisco

One of the things that Sal has done best in this novel is traveling. Other than New Jersey, Sal has not been able to stay in one place for long; he has spent most of the novel running. I think that he is running so that he doesn’t give himself enough time to think. He is scared of himself and his mistakes and is refusing to face the guilt that comes along with facing reality. He knows that this has been a sorry excuse of experiencing the West, and has instead been a collection of meaningless experiences that have actually had no affect on him.

            There’s an aspect of Sal that hasn’t really been addressed, that he has idealized from the beginning of the novel the idea of the West, and yet while traveling he has hung out only with those who he knew from the East cost.  He has done very little to immerse himself in the Western culture. He has mostly done the opposite; instead, he has insulted, stolen from, and threatened the locals, the people actually from the West.

A lot of the group members have talked about how they were surprised by the flow of the novel, that they were used to the beginning and conclusion of a chapter marking the beginning and conclusion of a new idea and that On the Road does not following this rule. I recently read that the original manuscript of On the Road was one fifty-foot long roll of paper. I don’t think that Kerouac wanted the reader to feel the same lack of order and reason that Sal and his friends were living their lives by. How their decisions are made on a whim, and that they carelessly float through their lives. It would be at least somewhat honorable if it made them happy, but they just feel nothing.

Back On the Road

It's definitely been a while since I have read this book because I was apparently not expecting Sal's obligatory fawning over Dean at the start of Chapter 11. In the sort of writing that we have come to expect, Kerouac begins the chapter with a description of setting, more specifically of Sal describing his recent travels in such a way that we are told where he has been with his own personal touch to it, which is one thing I think Kerouac does really well: I always feel as though Sal is talking to me. Although, if he was actually talking to me I feel like I would not be able to take it for very long given that we cannot go two sentences in to a chapter without mention of Sal's not-so-secret men-crush, Dean Moriarty. Sal is about to give his brief description of Salt Lake City when he feels the need to mention that it is "the least likely place for Dean to have been born,". Now, perhaps this isn't necessarily "fawning" but I find it difficult to not chuckle any time Sal mentions Dean because he so often fawns over him.

Despite the frequency at which Sal exposes his totally platonic obsession with Dean, I have today reached a breakthrough in my own little obsession: "Dean vs Setting: Battle for the Title of Main Character". Sal mentions Dean very often, this is true, but just like the aforementioned example these mentionings are always breaks from his describing the setting- no matter how often he talks about Dean, he talks about his journey and environment even more. I still believe that Dean is more likely to be the story's protagonist than Sal, however even if this were to be the case Dean is taking a back seat to the setting, which I believe is the thing Kerouac really cares about.

We have previously discussed the presence of sexism in this story and I think there is a consensus that it is so present because of the time period in which the book is set. I believe Kerouac does a fantastic job of flushing out the setting through details like that, and in Chapter 11 we start to see the presence of racism, and like Sal's comments about Dean and like the sexism- the racism is not really given any sort of special attention, it kind of just happens and the story carries on because the only one who should notice it is the reader. There is no point where Sal just straight out says "Man, do I hate minorities" but the use of the word "Negro", which most of the modern English-speaking world recognizes as at least a little racist, and the way in which it is used denotes the racist undertones in this time period. 

While I do love talking about how well Kerouac describes setting, I suppose I should make a more constructive point, and that point is likely that on every page, no matter what is happening, whether Dean is there or not, the setting is going to be described to us. This is consistent and without fail. The question I had about this book I think I have now resolved, I now believe that the setting is without a doubt the main focus of this story and all the characters are minor in comparison. Think about the different characters, even Dean, think about how little they have really been described to us. We know so little about these people and yet the setting is being described to us constantly. I'm still not sure what kind of story Kerouac has tried to write, but I am sure that the setting was made more important than the characters.

The Question of a Lifetime: “Who Am I?”

This week, through the context of the text and the positions that my group members took during our video blog, I have come to the conclusion that Sal can not answer the question “who am I”. Although it takes a lifetime in order to provide a sufficient response to this question, Sal possesses no sense of self as he is physically present in the world; however, mentally he has distanced himself into a alternative reality of loneliness. Sal has the  unique yet harmful ability to adapt and transform into different personalities based on his perceived surroundings. This is the basis to my argument that Sal not only does not know who he is as a human being, but also, he cannot improve upon himself through his journey on the road.

Sal cannot became a clone of Dean or anyone else that he encounters, but rather, in order to feel the sense of completeness that he has traveled thousands of miles for, he needs to come into his own body and most importantly love himself as he is. For if one wants to constantly change themselves to be like others, there is no ‘I’ in the equation. The free spirit that he longs for cannot be answered by geography even though the west, although somewhat different than the east, is still part of this Earth. If Sal wants to truly change, he needs to go a road to find himself and observe his behaviors rather those of Deans’ or anyone else's.

It seems as if at this point of the novel, there is no hope for Sal. The reason to the question who is the true narrator of the novel that Kerouac presents his reader is formed because Sal is not providing his reader with a fully descriptive and enthralling point of view due to the fact that he cannot mentally or emotionally be fully present in the world.  The question becomes will Sal be able to snap out of this hypnotic trance that he has trapped himself in, or will he remain stuck in that alternate universe for the remainder of the novel.

Nothing but a "haggard ghost" (Meagan Adler)

        In this week’s reading, Sal, “weatherbeaten and gray” (pg.55), becomes bored with his own mundanely dull life out west.  The reader almost feels a sense of relief as he finally comes to the realization that his westward journey has not changed his naively mediocre personality.  He is that “haggard ghost” (pg.54) trying to search for a new identity that is seemingly nonexistent.  Furthermore, he is consumed by a hopeless sense of dejection as desperately asks himself, “Oh where is this girl I love?” (pg.71).  Prior to his journey Sal is preoccupied with the false sense of hope that he will become a changed man as he begins his journey on “Route 6 across America” (pg.71), yet he now comes to the realization that as he comes to the end of America he has “nowhere to go but back” (pg.71).  He becomes “completely bored” (pg.65) not only with the dull Banana King Remi praises, but with life itself out west.  Sal realizes that he has nobody and is a nobody and that he lives in solitude in the “loneliness of San Francisco” (pg.67).  In my opinion, I feel like Sal has to find himself before he can find this girl he is looking for.  He has almost a sense of innocent naivety, in which makes him an easy target for people like Remi to influence.  If anything, Sal has become slightly changed for the worse, as he realizes he is a “natural-born thief” (pg.65), like everyone else in America.  I particularly powerful point of the reading was when Sal second guessingly asks himself “Why had I come here?” (pg.69); this shows that he doubts his decision to become this transformed man in the west.  Overall, through this weeks reading I realize that I no longer sympathize with Sal because he is such a uninterestingly characterless narrator.  

Group Discussion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQInYlj1uxI&feature=em-upload_owner