ROAD

Add your content here and use this format: Your Name: Your Lead Date: Summary Response Attachment: Discussion Questions:

Jacob West-Roberts 5/11/10 Summary Response: The last part of On The Road begins with Sal and Dean in New York and their interactions with Sal's father and aunt, his father recently having come out of jail. Dean, in a surprise move, repays Sal's aunt for a speeding ticket she paid for him. Afterward, Dean and Sal continue wandering. Sal gets on a bus to Denver, and meets a man who reminds him of a less energetic Dean; his name is Stan. When they arrive at Denver, they are notified that Dean is coming- He wants to go to Mexico, a place that Sal and Dean had already decided as their destination. He wants to do this to speed up his divorce from Camille so he can marry Inez; not having any particular opposition to this, Sal and Stan let him come along. They drive into Mexico and proceed to have a drug-fueled party, with Sal viewing the town in which they've stopped as a sort of nirvana; through the haze of the drugs, he sees paradise, even though he has to sleep outside and when he wakes up, he's covered with the carcasses of dead bugs. He, Stan and Dean travel down through the Sierra Madre to Mexico City, noting the stark contrast between their own lives and the lives of the natives. When they do arrive at Mexico City, Sal explores the city, and soon falls ill with Dysyntery. When he awakens from his fever sleep, Dean tells him that his divorce has been finalized and he's returning to New York immediately.

Discussion Questions: -What is the correlation, or what are the correlations, between Sal's idealized perception of the lives of minorities and the social classes of the latter? -What is Sal's "Paradise", what is his "American Dream"? -How does Dean see the differences between the classes, as opposed to Sal? Note that Sal idealizes the class difference, whereas Dean comments, while in the Sierra Madre, that the inhabitants of the area they're passing through may never see more than one particular side of one particular mountain in a certain valley; does he pity them, or does he envy them, as Sal does? -Where does Sal's idealism of the lower classes/minorities stem from? -Why does Sal idealize Dean so much, if he isn't a minority and is from the same class as Sal is?

Justin Pruitt 3/5

Summary Response: The first part of On The Road, by Jack Kerouac, follows Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. Sal is the narrator of the story and Dean is his friend that he describes as "the side-burned hero of the snowy West." Sal lives with his aunt in Paterson, New Jersey, in the late 1940's. Persuaded by Dean and in want of adventure, he leaves to go West with in the July of 1947 with little money, little knowledge, and no plan. He is an ambitious writer and has "intelligent" friends like Dean, Carlo Marx, and others. Trying to get to Denver, he starts hitchhiking with strangers and making new friends on the way. After 10 days in Denver, he moves to San Francisco to live with Remi and his wife. They end up committing crimes and burglarizing for a couple days. After a dispute with Remi, Sal travels over to Los Angeles and has a two-week love affair with a Mexican girl, Terry, and plan to go to New York together. However, plans change and Sal leaves to go back to Paterson and live with his aunt, just missing Dean again. This is written as a first-person account from Sal's perspective.

Discussion Questions:

- What kinds of parallels between Jack Kerouac's life and Sal Paradise? - Which characters in the book represent people important to Jack's life? - What does Dean represent to Sal? Why is he a "hero of the snowy West?" - The novel is written in long, free-flowing paragraphs; what does this show about Jack in his writing and how does this apply to how he is as a person? - Is Sal looking for life out West, or trying to escape his life in Paterson? Or both? - In Sabinal, they talked about manana, "tomorrow there will be work, tomorrow things will be better." What does this say about the mentality of young people in this era? - Sal has many "friends," but how many of these do you think are temporary friendships that won't last long? - What do the Rockies symbolize for Sal? for Dean? for Jack? - How does Sal portray/describe his friends? What does this say about Sal personally, and even Jack? - Is this novel more fiction or autobiographical?

Jack Wertheimer 5/10/10

Summary Response: In the first part of Part Three, Sal finds himself alone in Denver in the spring of 1949. He doesn't do much except walk around, envying the lives of the Denver Mexicans and Blacks. Sal attends a baseball game in Denver, the whole time envying the members of other races who he perceives to be happier than him. After the game, Sal visits "a rich girl I knew" and she gives him $100 to fund a trip to San Francisco. After arriving in San Francisco, Sal immediately heads to find Dean, who is living with Camille. Dean answers the door "stark naked" and Sal and him begin to talk about what they have been up to since they last saw each other. Dean has been working as a mechanic and going crazy over Marylou, who has slept around a lot and is now married to a used-car dealer. All the time Sal and Dean are talking, Camille is sobbing miserably upstairs. In the morning, Camille throws Dean and Sal out. Dean and Sal decide they are going to go to New York and then to Italy to "live in whorehouses". They meet up with Roy Johnson and Galatea Dunkel. Galatea chastises Dean telling him that Camille told her that he had left her. After going to a jazz club, Dean and Sal go to a new friend's house. After being woken up by them, the new friend's wife only smiles and asks no questions. Dean calls her a "real woman". After an interesting ride back to Denver, Dean and Sal get in a bit of a fight when Sal snaps at Dean. They make amends and move on. A man needs someone to drive his Cadillac to Chicago and Dean immediately jumps at the offer. Dean quickly (pun intended) gets the car going over 110 mph and ends up flipping the car into a ditch. A farmer gets his tractor and tows the car out of the ditch. Dean and Sal can’t stop staring at the farmer’s daughter, who is described as a "prairie angel. Back on the road, Dean speeds through Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois all the while telling Sal stories of his childhood. After getting in a minor accident, Dean and Sal are taken into the police station. The police all think that the car is stolen but they straighten it up with the owner and Dean and Sal hit the road again. They arrive in Chicago and briefly go out to experience the Chicago jazz clubs. They take a bus to Detroit and Sal sleeps the whole way. Low on money, they spend the night at and all night movie place on Skid Row watching the same movies over and over. In the morning, they hitch a ride with a nice blond man to New York. Once in New York, Dean meets Inez. Immediately Dean tells Sal that he wants to ditch Camille and marry Inez. A few months later, Camille gives birth to Dean's second baby, and then Inez has a baby too. Dean is penniless and busy with his usual joys and troubles, so he and Sal don't go on to Italy after all.

Discussion Questions: -In this section, Dean and Sal go to a few jazz clubs. How does the theme of jazz music in //On the Road// relate to the novel thematically? Formally? -What is the significance of Sal's comments while at the softball game and wandering aimlessly around Denver? Does he really believe those things or does he just want to believe them? How do these comments reflect the majority of feelings towards minorities at this time? -On page 191, its is put bluntly that "We went to a bar down on Market Street and decided everything". How does this statement sum up the "plot" of the book so far? -What is the significance of Sal and Dean seeing an alto sax player who "is" Carlo Marx and another man who looks just like Bull Lee? -Do they feel lost and disillusioned because their group is no longer fully in tact? -In this chapter we really see Dean and Sal getting closer as friends instead of just the devoted reverence he used to have. It seems that Dean needs him to move on with him but do you think he would have liked to stay in San Francisco longer? -After the car crash, do you find it interesting that Sal and Dean's main concern is the "prairie angel" that is the farmer's daughter? What does this say about feelings toward woman during this period? Are women just usable pleasures to be disposed of after men are through with them? -Both Dean and Sal seem to believe that they are invincible and that nothing is ever their fault. Does this reflect an accurate or disillusioned mentality of this time? -Can Dean and Sal wanting to go to Italy be considered a metaphor for bettering one's situation? When Dean and Sal ultimately don't reach this goal do you think they feel disappointed or accepting because they only live how the road wants them to?