Sal's Destruction of the Novel

If there is anything that I have gotten from the last few readings of On the Road, it is that Sal’s character has few motives. Essentially, Sal is only motivated to travel to the west and become western (whatever that means) and he is also motivated to become a replica of Dean. Throughout most of the previous readings, we have all noted that Sal’s character is always admiring Dean for every little thing that he does. Moreover, although we do not really see Dean much in these last couple of chapters, it is evident that Sal is striving to become more like Dean. For instance, Sal’s adventures to San Francisco in pursuit of picking up women exemplify his attempt at becoming more like Dean. Sal became used to seeing Dean with multiple women at the same time and he wishes that he could do the same, but in reality, he cannot even get one women to be with him.

A few weeks ago, in part of our group discussion, we argued about whether Sal would be the main character or if Dean would eventually take over. I believe that the last few chapters have suggested that Sal will indeed take on this role because of his central involvement in the plot. However, I believe that the novel is more about what Sal is describing than about Sal himself. In other words, I believe that Jack Kerouac is making an attempt at communicating to the reader the literal experiences that one can encounter when “on the road”. So far, the entire novel has been Sal telling us about this one time that he went hitchhiking. Unfortunately, I think that if this continues to play out, the novel is going to become really really boring. The author could easily have made the novel more interesting by creating a plot where we would see more interaction between Sal and Dean. In reality, all that the audience (at least in our group) is interested in is Dean Moriarty. 

Although I wish that there would be a different main character in the novel, as of right now, it is still Sal, which means we must wonder how the rest of the novel will play out. What will the west eventually bring to Sal? In my opinion, it just looks like Sal is moving backwards. Lately, as Ari noted, he has basically become a complete idiot and has not done anything productive. Furthermore, I do not see any real development in the horizon and I fear that Sal’s stupidity will continue in the future readings. Please Jack Kerouac, find a way to make this more interesting.