Sal and Dean Alone in the World

It seems like everybody who knows Dean hates him. Everyone except for Sal. Dean strikes me as the type of person that, when you first meet him, you can’t help but to fall in love with his personality and charisma because he just brings excitement and adventure to lives that, for most characters, are pretty boring and dull. For example the gay man, who just by hearing Dean and Sal talk about their childhood memories, took a liking to Dean. On the other hand, there are those people who are fine with not having a “different” life and who want nothing to do with Dean and his search for excitement.  The problem with Dean is that, once people really know him, they realize he doesn’t care about anything but himself and that he will screw you over in a heartbeat just because he isn’t having a grand time with you anymore. Sal sees something in Dean that no one else sees though, and maybe it is just because he himself is as lost as Sal is and has no clue what he is even doing with his life that he decided to stick around a scumbag like Dean. Then again, Dean has shown that out of all the people he could have screwed over the most, Sal would be number one on the list, but Dean appears to be holding himself back from being a total ass to Sal.

It is shown repeatedly how bad women are treated, and it is also shown how bad they look to e treated badly. Take Galatea for example, she started off chasing Ed when he left her in a hotel because he was annoyed with her, and Galatea still wanted him back. Now Ed has left her again to go have fun with a friend who came upon a good amount of money and she still wants him back and even asks Sal if taking him to the jazz club every night will help her make him stay. Basically, Kerouac tries to show how women of that time were just so lost and dependent of the man they loved even if the man didn’t love them back. Like everything else though, Kerouac shoes two sides to women, and Marylou stands for that other independent side.