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.
I can see you're still in character, Mr. Therapist.
ReplyDeleteI'm inclined to agree with you over the idea that Sal has no sense of self but I do not agree with why, necessarily. As you can probably guess, I believe this to be the case because he has no personality. I don't think he's lost because of loneliness or any of that but I think Kerouac is purposefully not characterizing him. I think Sal is there to be our lens, he is just like the reader in that he kind of observing all this stuff that is happening in the capacity that he is allowed. I think Sal wishes he could be Dean but has accepted that he just can't be, if Sal tried to be like Dean he would probably be pretty uncomfortable. I do not think Sal will change because I do not think he is supposed to change, I don't think that's what Kerouac had in mind. Within the scope of your post, I personally believe Sal will remain in the alternate universe the whole time, because that's where he belongs.