“Bureaucracy!” says Old Bull; he sits with Kafka on his lap… (Meagan Adler)

       As we continue on our monotonously dull journey with Sal, we become frustrated as he aimlessly wanders with Dean on the road, as they try to escape the inescapable societal institutions.  We see that these institutions are going to follow Dean’s clan whether or not they are in the east or the west.  Whether it is needing Sal’s aunt to pay the fifteen dollars when they get pulled over by a cop, assuring themselves that “God exists” (pg.111) or paying twenty-five dollars to the cop when Ed Dunkel recklessly drives, Kerouac consistently reminds us that the group is trying to escape the inescapable institutions of family, state and church.  We are further frustrated by the idea that Sal and Dean are trying to become individuals in a country where the purpose of the individual is destined to fail.  I was particularly intrigued by Carlo Marx as he sees the borders of society and consciously decides to stop trying to escape the societal institutions.   He consciously advises Dean’s clan as he says, “The balloon won’t sustain you much longer.  And not only that, but it’s an abstract balloon.  You’ll all go flying to the West Coast and come staggering back in search of your stone” (pg.121); here, Carlo warns the group that they are trying to escape the inescapable force that will ultimately pull them in and lead to the failure of the individual. Sal frustrates us as he becomes a sheep that aimlessly follows Dean on his seemingly unsuccessful journey; as Sal says, “I didn’t want to interfere.  I just wanted to follow” (pg.123).  Do we like Sal? Not particularly.  Do we dislike Sal? Not particularly. I think that as a reader the journey seems to be mundanely dull because we do not feel any connection to the narrator.  The group is searching for a “wild and brawling and free” (pg.135) country, but will they ever find one? At the conclusion of this week’s reading, we are exposed to the wisdom of Old Bull as he sat watching sullen French faces go by at café tables in Paris and was a bartender in New York “merely for the experience” (pg.132).  As he “sits with Kafka” (pg.138) on his lap he tells the group “Tain’t nothing but bureaucracy. And unions! Especially unions!” (pg.138).  I found this part of the reading particularly powerful, as it clearly communicates that the individual is destined to fail and that the members of the Beat Generation will ultimately be pulled back by the inescapable societal forces that they so desperately try to break free from.