On The Road
... MaryLou becomes awful for Dean when she whores herself about town, Camille lives with Dean during a period when his life is "not so good," and Dean simply leaves his final wife Inez to return to San Francisco to live with Camille once again. Carole Vopat reiterates the sadness and complete lack of positivity of this pattern, noting that instead of "finding life" they are actually leaving it all behind "and especially in the best American tradition, they are leaving behind responsibility; wives, children, mistresses, all end up strewn about the highway like broken glass" (Vopat, 387). While to Sal, Dean may be the person whom primarily exemplifies the hopefulness and love for life that should guide this novel, he is more correctly seen as a negative and ultimately horrible character who in truth exemplifies what is wrong with the culture at the time, leaving women and family behind "like broken glass." It is not only the adventures that Dean embarks upon that often veer from his initial optimism, but it is also his life in general that follows the cycle of excited exuberance to a gloomy reality. While early on in the novel Sal describes Dean as an ultimate figure of manhood and the "western kinsman of the sun" (Kerouac, 7), by Part Three Dean’s life of disappointed optimism and uncontrolled impulsive nature has led him towards many problems. As described in Tim Hunt’s book Kerouac’s Crooked Road, Dean is a "fool for his refusal to recognize more clearly the way his allegiance to impulse and energy is gradually damning him" (Hunt, 70). Hunt does not see Dean as the optimistic catalyst that Sal does, but as an exemplification of what this story is really about – about hopes that are dashed due to unforgiving reality. When Sal sees Dean in Denver after a few months away from him, Dean has become a walking example of sadness and the toll that life takes. Sal’s physical description of Dean in his San Francisco apartment serves to exemplify this fact: He was wearing a T-shirt, torn pants hanging down his belly, tattered shoes, he had not shaved. . . his eyes bloodshot, and a tremendous bandaged thumb stood supported in midair (Kerouac, 177). Dean’s life at this stage, affected by his wild actions, had become much like his appearance – with more than one lover to support, a infected thumb, very little money, and not much to live for, Dean is on an ominous path to nowhere. In line with the path of the novel as a truly sad work, Dean’s life has become pitiable and horribly real. Dean, as a character, goes through the cycle of heated optimism to a wild time of excitement and then to an example of a disparaging 1940’s western hero. This cycle is matched by events of the novel to also follow this cycle of, as Warren French writes "movements …from beginnings full of happy anticipations, through periods of frenzied excitement to depressing conclusions" (French, 43). Just as Hunt suggests Dean’s foolishness in pursuing actions that push him towards this "depressing conclusion," Sal’s travels seem to have a similar foolish tendency. From the very beginning of Sal’s first trip West, there is a precedent set that Sal’s will consistently look for the best in all situations, but that these visions will ultimately fail. Without any road knowledge or real traveling experience Sal notes, "I’ll just stay on (Route) 6 all the way to Ely, I said to myself and confidently started" (Kerouac, 9, emphasis added). Sal’s confidence in this early event in his travels shows his innocence – for this plan certainly does not work out, as the dream of an easy trip to the West ends when Sal learns, only 40 miles away, that Route 6 cannot take him across the country. Sal effectively notes that "it was my dreams that screwed up, the stupid hearthside idea" (Kerouac, 10). Despite Sal’s realization of his foolish optimism, he goes on to make the same mistakes throughout his numerous cross-country trips. Before his trips, Sal encourages the reader to think that maybe this time he’ll be successful (Campbell, 455), thinking that he can make his money last by being frugal and not using it foolishly, for example. Instead Sal spends money in bars, wastes money on whiskey and apple pies, and buys booze for other road companions. This leaves him poor, depressed and unlike Campbell says above, turning the reader towards a more pessimistic interpretation of the novel, rather than an encouraging and hopeful one. As Sal continues down the road, his hopes get bigger and the consequences of disappointments grow larger along with those hopes. Late in Part One when Sal, staying in Denver with the Rawlins’, takes a trek to the mountains with a group including his hosts and Tim Gray, aspirations for the short trip run high. Sal notes that "only a few days ago I’d come to Denver like a bum; now I was all racked up sharp in a suit, with a beautiful well-dressed blond (Babe Rawlins) on my arm" (47). He is on top of the world, assuming nothing can or will go wrong with their trip. Again, he is showing this idea that the readers will buy into his story as a positive one, as Campbell would say, encouraging the readers to believe that good things will happen. Bringing him back to reality though, the trip follows the pattern of frenzied excitement to depressing end, when a gang of drunken teenage boys ruins a perfectly good party and a fight in a bar puts an end to an already ravaged evening. In the end, Sal ends up broke and the whole group takes "the sad ride back to Denver again" (Kerouac, 50), a much different and more depressing tone than on the way towards Central City. When Dean, Sal, and a new companion Stan decide on a trip to Mexico, the wear and tear of many compiled and disparaging events begins to change Sal. This does not stop him from trying once again to succeed in an incredible journey that they all hope will turn out just as planned. This time though, the stakes are much higher. This is shown by the passage in which Kerouac writes "’Man, this will finally take us to IT!’ said Dean with definite faith" (253). The trip begins with such optimism for Dean that he believes that they will all finally discover the thing that they all assume that they are missing in their lives. A trip like this, after noticing the events of the rest of the story, is almost certain to fail, as Sal (who is seriously beginning to doubt all of this unabashed optimism) confirms. When Stan gets stung by a bee and begins to swell up too much to ignore, Sal shows his weariness of the trip by saying, "Damn! It made the whole trip seem sinister and doomed" (256). Sal’s inclination, for the first time not an optimistic one, is correct as the trip to Mexico ends up being more than they can handle. Vopat notes the change during the trip, and the higher stakes, saying that "in Mexico Sal hopes to escape from the self, civilization, and their discontents" (Vopat, 393), in other words, Sal is trying to find IT. She then goes on , quoting Sal: "the strange Arabian paradise we had finally found at the end of the hard, hard road was only a wild whore house after all" (Vopat, 393). It is impossible to consider this event anything other than a comment on the harsh and depressing realities of the world, the same realities that Vopat sees in the American landscape of Sal Paradise’s story. "America is a land of corruption and hypocrisy, promising everything and delivering nothing, living off the innocence and opportunity" (Vopat, 390) she says when describing Sal’s America. The very fact that a critic sees America as such a depressing world after Sal’s description of his adventures upon it show that his original thoughts of optimism are sorely erroneous in this novel. The best place to search for optimism in this novel can be seen in the fact that Sal seems to eventually break away from his blind hopefulness at the end of the story. Sal no longer feels the intense drive to discover and become disappointed. According to Hunt, he has already experienced "the action of breaking out of the established routine or order in search of kicks and the knowledge of time" and it has only left him with "experiences that end in vision...