Sal: “You mean we’ll end up like old bums?” Dean: “Why not, man? Of course we will if we want to, and all that. There’s no harm ending that way. You spend a whole life of noninterference with the wishes of others, including politicians and the rich, and nobody bothers you and you cut along and make it your own way” (Meagan Adler)

      At the conclusion of our seemingly never ending cyclical journey with Sal, we are able to experience the sense of belongingness that begins to define both him and Dean as we leave Denver, the city life “dissolving to our sight” (pg.255), and go on the road to Mexico.  Dean is able to relate to the people of Mexico, a country where “Everybody’s cool, everybody looks at you with straight brown eyes and they don’t say anything, just look, and in that look all of human qualities are soft and subdued and still there” (pg.266); here, we see that Dean feels like an integrated part of the laid back society as opposed to how he feels in America, where he is an looked down upon outcast, burdensome to the judgmental society.  As Sal describes, “His eyes were red-streaked and mad and also subdued and tender- he hand found people like himself” (pg.267).  Here, I sympathized with Dean and felt like it was almost a bittersweet moment, for he was neglected by all the societal institutions as a child and never truly had a place in American society.  A particularly powerful part of the end of the novel that underscores the idea that Sal worships Dean as a God is that when he is high and says, “In myriad pricklings of heavenly radiation I had to struggle to see Dean’s figure, and he looked like God” (pg.272); this emphasizes the idea that Sal sees the Beat Generation’s attitude almost as a religion, being led by the heroic individualist, Dean.  Another part of the conclusion that I found particularly intriguing was that where Sal says “You mean we’ll end up like old bums?” (pg.239) and Dean replies “Why not, man? Of course we will if we want to, and all that.  There’s no harm ending that way.  You spend a whole life of noninterference with the wishes of others, including politicians and the rich, and nobody bothers you and you cut along and make it your own way” (pg.239); here, Dean expresses the Beat mentality in that the rebellious Beat Generation wants so desperately to escape the societal institutions that restrict them as individuals.  With Dean as its leader, the generation is trying to pull society to the liberal left and ultimately allow the individual to prevail over the conformist; it is for this reason that it rejects society and wants to stay moving on the road.  Ultimately, we see the substantial impact of this generation on America in shifting society’s approach and causing the people to question their current values, for their movement is unforgettable; we, like Sal, will always “think of Dean Moriarty” (pg.293).   

A Lot to Cover

      Wow, there’s a lot in this week’s reading that I will probably not be able to go over, but let’s just say that there was a lot of…excitement? Dean and Sal essentially go crazier than crazy and act like they are part of some badass movie. Neither of them have any control over their lives and Sal realizes this. Dean, on the other hand, cannot get himself to understand the mess that he is living. Although we have hated on Sal since the beginning for living such a boring life, we have to commend him on at least understanding that he is trash. Dean continues to live his joke of a life and he does not find much wrong with it. At one point in the reading he goes after Marylou and wants to kill her just because she is a distraction to his current affair with Camille. Dean’s insane attempts to get rid of Marylou result in a self-imposed injury on his hand. Moreover, when Dean and Sal finally get together again at the beginning of the reading, they take off for a new adventure.

      The two men jump back “on the road” and it seems as if Dean has no emotional attachment to the remnants of a family that he leaves behind. Sal, in reality, is really leaving nothing behind, but he realizes that Dean is no longer someone that he should look up to. For the first time, Sal notes all of Dean’s weaknesses when he thinks about what Dean says to him. Sal understands that Dean can fuck a million girls and still be a failure if he is unable to settle down and just be happy. In my opinion, Sal has reached a point where he has given up on life and he is only staying with Dean to give him any sort of reason to live.
      One major idea that I would like to point out is the possibility that Dean and Sal are having a significant mid life crisis. One scene that can arguably support this argument is when Sal becomes angry at Dean when he mentions how he is older than him. Sal becomes insulted at the fact that Dean would point out his old age. In addition, the two of them act as if they are two crazy teenage boys by stealing cars and fleeing a city and just constantly having to escape the consequences of the law. 

Generations

      In my earlier posts I wrote about how I had expected Sal to change, but when I wrote that I had thought he was going to change into a person excited by he saw  and experienced or at least some what optimist about America in general. I never thought he would be become the person we see now. 

      The fact that he thinks his life would be better as a minority such as an African American or Japanese American make shim appear very ignorant to me.it is a classic case of white guilt, that because be has been given opportunities that are not given to others means that he therefore has to hate himself. And that brings me to my next point. In the beginning of part three it because very apparent how much Sal hates himself. He has finally started to develop as character, which is what I have spent the entire novel asking him to do, so why does the Sal I see right now make me sad?

      Although On the Road makes me depressed, I think it is a very good representation of what many young adults go through. We grow up being told who we are supposed to be and that this way of living is supposed to make us happy. That if we grow up under the older generations  rules follow their plans and become a contributing member of society, we are supposed to be happy. But I honestly don't know that many adults who are not just living and working to pay off the mortgage  and are not cynical about the world around them, even though they fit the classic mold of what we were told growing up is correct. I think Sal and Dean are trying to escape that, and I do find that honorable and understandable. They are also trying to not worry about life which is very different from most of my generation. I constantly hear throughout Gulliver's halls how someone is never going to get into college. Sal tries very hard to avoid all deep emotions, which is a nice break from all other pieces if literature. 

      If there is one thing I can report on that makes me happy is that he has started to gain some respect for women. Hallelujah to that too, I was starting to get upset He finally feels bad for Camille because of the way Dean treats and has treated her.  

“With frantic Dean I was rushing through the world without a chance to see it” (Meagan Adler)

      As we again begin to aimlessly wonder on another (yes, another) cyclical journey with Sal and follow the “HOLY GOOF” (pg.183), Dean, we see the “rocking and roaring” (pg.187) Beat Generation as they “cross and recross towns in America” (pg.234). Sal realizes that “He (Dean) was the BEAT-the root, the soul of Beatific” (pg.185) (because none of us saw that coming) and that “with frantic Dean” he was “rushing through the world without a chance to see it” (pg.194).  Dean refuses to remain in one place for too long because he is afraid of settling down and being restricted by the societal institutions; he so desperately wants to escape these constraints and stay moving “a hundred and ten miles an hour straight through” (pg.218) so he does not have to loose his freedom as an individual and become one of the societal sheep.  We see Dean’s frivolous and arrogant carefree attitude at parts of the novel such as that where he says, “Now you see, man, there’s real woman for you.  Never a harsh word, never a complaint or modified; her old man can come in any hour of the night with anybody and have talks in the kitchen and drink the beer and leave any old time. This is a man, and that’s his castle” (pg.192); here, we see that Dean wants to be treated like a king, unconstrained by the societal institution of family.  I feel as if on the journey with his “holy con-man” (pg.202), Sal feels like he is again a child on a “white horse riding alongside over every possible obstacle that presented itself” (pg.196). He craves the invincibility of a wild and free child who sees with clarity, unrestrained by the distorted realities of the world.  Furthermore, I think that it is this need for youthfulness that Sal becomes notably offended by Dean’s remarks about his age; as he says, “you’re always making cracks about my age” (pg.201). We experience these feelings of invincibility at moments such as that when Sal says, “In no time at all we were back on the main highway and that night I saw the entire state of Nebraska unroll before my eyes” (pg.219); as he sees the whole state, he feels free and powerful in the idea that he is conquering the nation.  Unlike Sal, I have become quite bored with the mundanely dull journey and am about ready for it to end (oh wait, it does…where does he again end up? At his aunt’s house…back under the societal roof of the familial institution).  “So we didn’t go to Italy” (pg.235)… what a surprise. 

Part 3 Review

      Luckily, unlike my blogs about parts one and two of On The Road, my blog is part three is going to be a lot less negative. At first, when reading the first few chapters I was not surprised to find out that Kerouac was going to continue the same cycle that he did in the first two parts by treating each part as almost a new novel with a new rising and falling action; however, I am happy to say that he did change major details to make the novel bearable to read.

      I am pleasantly surprised to finally call Sal the narrator of the novel. Part three is the story of the transition that Sal made from a distant ghost to a character who made his mark. He is no longer in the background but is present in the moment. This occurred through the role reversal  between Dean and Sal. Now, I perceive Dean to be a weak and cowardly character. He is so frightened to death to settle down with Camille that he sabotages his relationship so he can get out of it. He would rather drive on an endless road than be with one person for the rest of his life. But the sad thing is, the road is his excuse to live in a fantasy world rather than in reality. No matter if he goes east to west or back form west to east, Sal and Dean always end up on the Pacific or Atlantic coasts and are forced to deal with their problems. The middle section of America grants them the temporary ability to distance themselves from real life and the burdens that come with it.

      Furthermore, in terms of the hostile relationship with Camille and Dean, woman thus far have been useful for only one thing: sex. They are weak minded and to me, especially now of days where it is very possible that in the next few years our president could be a female, it is pretty sickening. Camille and the others have to realize that ‘men’ like Dean can never change. They are grown men that were never raised right. So in a sense, no matter how badly I feel for her, it is Camille’s fault for marrying Dean. She should of realized that no one can raise a man because he is too far gone.

      I am hopeful that Sal will continue to become his own man in part four and hesitantly say that the novel is getting somewhat better.

Sal Paradise and Marylou Are Dead

      Alright so we're back on this book for the first time in a while and it is exactly as I remember it. In the last reading we see this extended period of time where Sal and Dean are together essentially alone because Marylou is less of a character than Sal is (the only reason we can even call Sal a character is because we're using his perspective) and you might hope to see a bit more depth int heir relationship- perhaps the depth that has been sort of implied or assumed but until now has not been brought up by the author. What we get is more of the idea that Dean is the charismatic wildcard who always gets his way, and everyone he knows basically just worships him. He asks Sal and Marylou to strip and they do. That's it.

      We get some further confirmation that Sal is a lonely dude, it's pretty clear that Dean is his only friend (not even Marylou likes him) and I'm pretty sure Dean only likes him because he is the most loyal of his disciples. We see another character who represents a subculture not yet represented in the book, so that was cool for the whole 10 seconds it was relevant, but unfortunately it all came back to the trio in the car.

      Now at one point we do see a little bit of characterization here, or what might look a little like it, when Dean starts telling stories. This might not seem like a big deal, but it's more than most characters have. Who the hell is Sal? Does he have memories that don't involve Dean? Was he a child at some point? Dean has stories, he has a past that he can reference and while it's not all that deep it's still a story. Sal has no story- Marylou has no story, but it seems like Kerouac has at least a little bit of interest in developing Dean.

      A while back I said I thought the book's purpose was to show us the developing cultures in America at this time, and I stand by that. I just wish we could get more of that as opposed to a long car ride and occasionally a character will pop in to remind us why we're here. I think I'm beginning to see why it's called On The Road, we seem to be on a path with a definite direction, but we're not fucking going anywhere.

On the Road to...

So once again nothing really happens. I can say at least I was surprised in their ability to make it all the way to the west cost on only twenty bucks, some faith in their mental capacity was restored, especially driving for thirty miles without any gas. Maybe all of their brain cells have not been drunk away. Dean who was once at least a little amusing has lost all of his purpose in the novel. He does absolutely nothing other than use up space and mess with people’s life, people like Mary Lou and Camille.  

So Camille welcomes Dean back inter her life. Why on earth would Camille take him back? What could possibly induce her? Was it the fact that when they first met he was practically sleeping with the two different people at the same time or was it the fact that he left her with their new born child? My guess is that it was his amazing personality and motivation for life. I think I’ll be writing my thesis on this.

So it’s not that Sal really ever had a plan for life, but he did have expectations. During his first journey everything amazed him, even things that should not be amazing him, did. But now the best word to describe him now would be melancholy. When he is walking through San Francisco he is down right depressed. Sal is only happy or at least appears to be happy when he is with Dean, which appears to be his only purpose.

  I am severely disappointed with On The Road.

The Lemon Squeezer

      Although still not fully invested in On The Road after nearly two hundred pages, the character relationships are in fact becoming more complex and interesting for me as a reader who looks for distinct characteristics to distinguish between characters. Before this week’s reading, I believed most of the characters to be mundane, boring, and lifeless creatures; however, now after reading this week, I am becoming more intrigued by the character relationships.

      My title for this week’s post, The Lemmon Squeezer, plays extreme significance in relation the characters of the novel. I developed this term myself to describe a person who metaphorically squeezes everything useful they can out of someone, and then dumps them in the trash. I believe this term perfectly describes the character of Dean. His ‘honorable’ quest has turned into one characterized by manipulation, desperation, and lust. He continues to leave Sal, his ‘best friend’, for weeks at a time for someone else, and then returns once he is contempt that he has finished his business. Furthermore, he manipulates Marylou through his profession of his love to her to continue to journey on with him, but in the meantime, truly could care less about any one them. He desires the company of Marylou and Sal, but once he has found something better, leaves them for good.

      To me, it is pathetic that Sal and Marylou would even bother to continue on their journeys with Dean. I understand that Sal admires Dean and his spirit, but Dean’s state of mind is infectious and constantly brings Sal down. Before, Sal dreamed of the Mississippi River and what it symbolized; however, now he can only describes its physical characterizes in a mundane tone. In other words, Sal’s view point has become more and more contemplative and depressed. Dean literally is sucking out all the life and dreams that Sal possesses. In reality, Sal could become a great narrator, but because of Dean, he continues to disappoint.

      I understand that Sal connects with Dean due to their shared status as ‘misfits’ (Sal because of his thoughts and Dean because of his actions), but he has to understand that if he does in fact continue on this road, it will lead to his inevitable lonely death. Sal’s perspective on life needs to continue to stay positive, or I worry that he will attempt to commit suicide, or even worse, become himself, another ‘Lemon Squeezer’.

A Commentary on Part 2

       After finishing Part 2 of the novel this weekend, I must say that the novel has gotten more interesting and more complex. It would be difficult to touch on everything that occurred in this week’s reading because of the introduction of so many new conflicts along with a few new characters and of course a great amount of time “on the road”. 

       Towards the middle of Part 2, there begins a whole new element of disorder in the novel. We move again for new adventures out west and Sal becomes a bit more like Dean in terms of his partying style and overall outlook (he obviously still is not as cool as Dean). Sal develops as a character which makes the novel more interesting than before because he is no longer the character that just sits there and admires the actions of others. In addition, I believe that the greater focus on characters such as Marylou allows for the better understanding of some of the smaller, external conflicts in the novel. The dramatic change in both tempo and complexity after Part 1 of the novel has made the work somewhat more interesting and it truly leaves the audience wondering what is to come.

       I would like to make the major focus of my post on the time spent in New Orleans in the novel. When considering the fact that Kerouac wrote the novel during the 40’s and 50’s, it is remarkable to see the attitude that he exhibits in the novel towards the African-American culture. The audience can see a clear representation of the author’s perspective through the character’s comments on the jazz, bars, and other spectacles in New Orleans. Every character marvels at the African-American community’s excess of talent and I believe that it is incredible to see this in a novel that was written in times where segregation was still present. Jack Kerouac wrote the novel knowing that it would be subject to controversy if he idolized the African-American musicians (specifically in New Orleans), but clearly he did not care. I believe that these scenes in New Orleans are indicative of the overall purpose of the novel. In my opinion, the novel is a tool for the author to illustrate the cultural diversity across America that can be seen when “on the road”. 

“We wandered around, carrying our bundles of rags in the narrow romantic streets. Everybody looked like a broken-down movie extra…a lemon lot, and how’s a man going to make a living with a gang like that?” (Meagan Adler)

      As we continue to aimlessly wander with the “foolish gang” (pg.155) as they again head back west on their cyclical and seemingly never ending journey, we continue to see them attempting to escape the inescapable societal institutions.  We see these societal interferences when the cop “whipped out his gun” (pg.154) and demanded them to keep their hands up; here, we see that the institution of state acts as an inescapable authoritative force that will continue to follow Dean and his clan throughout the country.  Society acts as a restrictive roof, as Sal says, “it’s the too-huge world vaulting us” (pg.146) in which he tries to say the impossible “good-by” (pg.146).  We also see the societal institution of family haunting Sal as he imaginatively sees and hears his 1750 “strange Dickensian mother” (pg.161) saying “‘don’t come back and plague your honest, hard-working mother.  You are no longer like a son to me’” (pg.161); we again see society pulling Sal back to it’s socially acceptable ways.  In this week’s reading, we also see emotionally conflicted feelings from Sal towards Dean in which at one moment he admirably expresses “Dean took the wheel and carried us clear to the top of the world” (pg.157) and the next moment he begrudgingly says, “Where is Dean and why isn’t he concerned about our welfare? I lost faith in him that year” (pg.161); this shows us that Sal so desperately wants to be Dean, for he feels a sense of invincibility and individuality when he is with him, but also sees that he is a societal low-life who will forever aimlessly wander in a purposeless pursuit of freedom.  Furthermore, I think Sal is mentally conflicted with the idea of whether he wants to be the socially accepted conformist or the rebelliously disobedient individual.  A particularly powerful part of this week’s reading was when Sal decides, because “Dean didn’t care one way of the other” (pg.167) that “It was the end” (pg.167) and that he wanted to get out.  Sal expresses, “We wandered around, carrying our bundles of rags in the narrow romantic streets.  Everybody looked like a broken-down movie extra, a withered starlet; disenchanted stunt-men, midget auto-racers, poignant California characters with their end-of-the-continent sadness, handsome, decadent, Casanova-ish men, puffy-eyed motel blondes, hustlers, pimps, whores, masseurs, bellhops- a lemon lot, and how’s a man going to make a living with a gang like that?” (pg.159).  I feel like Sal, once again, sees the hopeless fringes of society and retreats back to live under his societal roof where he will be the socially accepted New York conformist as he apathetically expresses, “We were all thinking we’d never see one another again and we didn’t care” (pg.167).