Part one: term paper

The first establish characteristic of Jack Kerouac’s glorified idea of the “road” lifestyle is a person who is not too attached to anyone or anything because he/she is always on the move. Sal and Dean exemplify this characteristic because they are able to easily detach themselves from people or situations to continue their journey on the road. Sal Paradise, the protagonist, is a recently divorce man living in New Jersey with his aunt. He has no stable job or family that would hold him to down in anyplace. His life had grown stagnate and routine, and he longed for the sort of adventure that would inspire his writing and reinvigorate his life again. This desire for inspiration and adventure leads him to venture out into the American west. All these traits makes Sal the perfect candidate for the “road” lifestyle. On his travel Sal proves that he is capable of escaping relationships. Sal meets a Mexican girl named Terry, and they begin traveling together. Soon the two of them settle down for a while in little town in California called Sabinal with Terry family and her son. He and the son, Johnny, hit it off, and Sal begins to be a father figure to the boy. Sal gets a job, and had to support his new “family” by picking cotton. At first he enjoyed family life. Then the “road” called for him again, and he  starts to have the urge to leave. Sal said “I could feel the pull of my own life calling me back” (pg.98). As if this relationship was a break from his actual life and he never intended to keep it.  He no longer enjoyed the responsible of taking care and of a woman and a child that was not his. So as quickly as the urge to go to New York erupted inside of him, he was just as quickly abandoning Terry and her baby. Sal continues on without regret, and almost immediately begins with a new relationship with a new girl. Sal behavior was probably influence by his friends, and the series of mischievous acts they played on woman. They would seduce them, use them, and then discard them when they were no longer of use to them. For example, one of Sal friends, Ed Dunkel, was running low on money. He met a woman with who was considerable more wealthy then he was, and out of convenience, he married her so he continue his road trip across the country. When she stopped funding the trip, he ditched her in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Dean, Sal’s friend and idol, was constantly traveling. He would settle in a town or city until he no longer found pleasure in the places he was staying. He treated the woman that he was with similarly. He would also abandon woman as soon as they were no longer “fun” to be with. It is pretty predicable that once Sal Paradise started hanging out with people who personified the “road” lifestyle, he would begin to act similarly.