Term Paper Blog 2

After choosing to leave his wife and put his career on pause, Sal ventures off to follow Dean across the country to see what he would do next. Sal ends up following Dean to Denver, and although Dean is not there a long time, Sal still enjoys his time there. Dean always finds a way to get lost in one place and, with very little money or resources, is able to carry on his nomadic lifestyle from one city to the next. This makes it very hard for Sal to follow him, and so sometimes Sal is stuck with Dean’s entourage, one may say. This entourage involves characters such as Carlo Marx, who Sal absolutely falls in love with because of his vivid personality and his desire to party and drink and meet women, which is just what Sal is looking for to find his new personality, or the personality he thought he never had which may just be lost within.  This is another reason why Sal follows Dean. Dean has met interesting people in his life that compliment his way of life. These people are somewhat mad, just like Dean, and can even be categorized as other lost souls as they party and drink their way through life. All of Dean’s friends, the other hitch-hikers, and even all of Sal’s old friends have something in common when it comes to this journey. They all have the ability to show Sal something new, something unknown to the young writer who is looking for inspiration to find his true meaning and go back home content with his discovery and finally start writing again with the passion he started with.

Sal realizes he is not always in Dean’s presence, but it is as if Dean had a pre-made path for Sal to go on. This path has twists and loops which Dean has shortcuts to and so he can avoid them and keep going with his life, but for Sal all these unexpected stops and people are new pieces to the puzzle of his life. Each person has something new to bring to the table. Whether it is partying, women, a job, or even being someone who Sal does not want to associate with any longer after the first encounter. Every person is a different experience, a different acquisition to Sal’s soul search so Sal can pick and choose which qualities he enjoys seeing in others so he can mold his personality to fit that and become the best person he believes he could be. In a way this is bad because Sal is not being true to himself and doing everything he wants to do, but he conforms to the group ideal, and since he likes this group, he changes himself to adapt to their lifestyle and he keeps following Dean to meet new pieces to his soul puzzle.