“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.