Dean's Return

So Dean is back and is looking as lively as ever. He has again left a girl and gone back to Marylou and is back with Sal to go on another adventure after not seeing each other for over a year. As always, Dean is talking nonsense and doing whatever his impulse recommends. I don’t think seeing Dean again will be good for Sal because Sal was starting to mature and getting his life in order more or less and with Dean there it might just become a circle and Sal will end up going back to his old adventure seeking character. Sal thinks that Dean is changed and on his way to maturity, but how does leaving a wife with a kid behind and buying a car he can’t afford and driving it across the country show any signs of maturity. This shows that Sal is naïve and is somewhat star-struck by Dean and his wild ways.

Throughout the book, mistreatment of women has been a blatant issue but no character seems to have realized it or addressed it until now. Sal mistreated women, Dean mistreats them and cheats on them all the time, and now the most recent example of Ed, who marries a woman and then leaves her stranded with nothing once he gets annoyed of her. Sal says “the truth of the matter is that we don’t understand our women; we blame on them and it’s all our fault.” This shows how Sal has been learning to take responsibility for his actions and accepting that the blame should be put on him on some occasions. This also shows how he accepts that the men mistreat the woman, but he excuses it by saying that it is because they just don’t understand them. This brings me back to earlier thoughts I have shared about Sal unconsciously trying to find true love and not just another girl to have a nice night with. It all started with Terry and hopefully we will see that this true love is found with Lucille, who he wants to marry.

At first I saw Dean as the protagonist of the story, but now I see him as the antagonist because he is the key to Sal’s destruction. He leads Sal into paths that shape Sal in a way that he doesn’t need to be and so he shapes him wrong, and because Sal stupidly looks up to him, he won’t say no to Dean.