In Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the introduction of Dean Moriarty and the paradoxical themes of Eastern and Western "road" in the character of Sal Paradise cause disagreements in Sal's evolution. Sal he ultimately chooses to return to the East and its standard of living, establishing Sal, not Dean, as the novel's true hero. The character's cross-country misadventures allow Sal to develop his sociological bent and gain a new, more worldly outlook. of American spirituality.The frontier bohemian-style Buddhist ideology that takes the form of “IT” provides a compelling catalyst to the characters.These freedoms, however, come at a high price when he recognizes the potential destruction that Dean uses and abandons the people around to him, and his pursuit of "IT" is fallacious. The implications of his abandonment of responsibilities ultimately distance him from Sal and many others. However, the security of Sal's Eastern lifestyle is repeatedly found at odds with the seductiveness of the West, the “road” itself is symbolized particularly in the character of Dean Moriarty, whose fate placed him in the position to exploit this freedom. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essaySal, born in the East and living with his aunt, is a young veteran working on a novel and intermittently attending college. He had recently separated from his wife at the beginning of the novel. His father had just died and he, it could be argued, was not emotionally stable when he first met Dean. His authorial inspiration had reached a plateau and his life had become dry and lackluster. His lifestyle before meeting Dean Moriarty corresponded to the American ideals of the time which came to symbolize the McCarthyite dogmas of the East. After developing a disdain for “intellectual” company, Sal begins to realize, “My New York friends were in the negative, nightmarish position of tearing society down and giving their tired bookish, political, or psychoanalytic reasons (Kerouac 1, 8). Sal embodies “the helplessness of the individual lost in a vast and complex, corporate society” which has proven to be a common conflict in postwar American fiction (Newhouse 161). His desire to be initiated into an ultimate truth, and subsequently explore it in his novel, began to blossom with Dean's guidance and their many cross-country adventures. Only after Sal abandons his "big half-manuscript...my comfy home papers" does his dialogue and stationary writing end and he is given the chance to experience the meaning of his novel on the road rather than reflect comfortably (and to no avail) in his eastern home (Kerouac 9). “Dean is the perfect guy… because he was actually born on the road,” Sal reveals early in the novel (1). Sal is unnerved by the way Dean lives his life and finds himself consumed by the promise of traveling with Dean to give meaning to his very existence and his scholarly aspirations. When asked about the reasons for his cross-country wanderings, “Dean could only blush and say, “Ah well, you know how it is” (145). The West, for Sal, represents action, exploration, camaraderie and spiritual fulfillment. Defying the decade's conservative aura of politesse, Dean turns to the taboo street life that the novel suggests is the only way to break away from society and achieve transcendence. He forms a network of enthusiastic followers who are enchanted by his hustler charisma and boundless energy, "he was simply a young man who was tremendously enthusiastic about life" (4). Many times throughout the novel, Sal begins to feelaware of his “whiteness” and seeks relief in other races ostracized by post-war American society because, for Sal, being white is a sign of decadence of body and mind (Gair 65-6, Richardson 7). “I was… a disillusioned “white man.” All my life I had white ambitions” (Kerouac 180). There is a kind of truth in the fact that the master enslaves himself. For Dean, this is especially true. He, who targeted the lowest sections of society, supports the paradox that only through oppression does man find true freedom. In many cases the characters in the novel are enraptured by the spontaneity, and whites disapprove of the expressiveness of jazz, which at the time was considered an exclusively African-American poor art form. To look different; act differently; to think otherwise, these became the vague archetypes of subversion and impiety (Johnston 105). “On the Road invites us to suppose that blacks in America were somehow “freer” than whites…as if suffering were some kind of gift” (Richardson 12). But Sal also believes that white people fail to find true meaning due to their capitalist lifestyle and materialistic tendencies. Too little culture and the corruption of capitalism, according to Sal, are what bogs down white people (Mortenson 2). Sal and Dean find solace in escapades in Mexico, in jazz clubs and on the streets of cities where a minority group has a majority presence. This emphasis on minority freedom is epitomized in the novel when Sal develops a passionate, if brief, relationship with a Mexican man. a woman named Terry and also takes care of her son while picking cotton to support her new family on a very meager wage for an extremely boring job. “I forgot all about the East and all about Dean, Carlo and the bloody road” (97). Yet, Sal remembers Dean; he begins to feel restless and abandons Terry at his family's home. Sal, however, has independently experienced freedom (freed from Dean's influence) and this marks a profound change in his autonomy. From this point on in his journey as a character, Sal begins to reflect on the endless warnings about Dean. “Dean had gotten worse, he [Old Bull Lee] had confided to me, “It seems to me that he is headed towards his ideal destiny. …irresponsibility and psychopathic violence…if you go…with this madman you will never make it” (Kerouac 147). Sal has a ready apology for every wrong Dean commits, regardless of the severity of his actions. Everyone from Sal's aunt to Dean's brother hints that going down the road with Dean will result in disaster at his partner's expense. “They said I really didn't know Dean…he was the worst scoundrel that ever lived and one day I would find out to my regret (Kerouac 196). Dean may be a path to fulfillment and adventure, but the avant-garde bohemian is so unpredictable and unpredictable that there is no guarantee he will maintain his interest in his companions. The bohemian, after all, does not demand stability. It is a lifestyle characterized by spontaneity, anarchy, and “total obsession with one's deepest impulses” (Newhouse 15). To be a bohemian in America was to embrace the mystique of the hobo. It is a renunciation of every bourgeois tendency in favor of a more rustic existence. One's resources cannot be collected or stored: they are found on the street and must be sought and earned. Sal and Dean often leave with small items and often don't even have a thought out or even coherent plan for their adventure. The postwar American bohemian, in particular, makes use of worldly misappropriations to further the search for a higher consciousness. Frequent drug use is persistent throughout the novel in attempt byof many characters to rise above the mundane realities of the world to achieve higher goals. truth. Many characters in the novel, not excluding Sal, experience the effects that drugs have on their consciousness. Usually, however, sexual promiscuity proves more rampant, with Dean as its very poster child. Challenging the decade's conservative aura of politeness; Dean engages in the taboo street life that so fascinates Sal and the other characters. Sal more or less constantly defends Dean's actions, no matter how much he exploits and neglects his friends and responsibilities. “'Crime' was not something to pout and sneer at; it was an explosion of American joy, a wild yes; it was Western” (7). “For him sex was the only holy and important thing in life,” however, “his relationships with women are violent and dull enough to…wonder” (Kerouac 2, Richardson 5). Dean's fanatical, though admittedly fleeting, passions with various women explore the idea that sex offers a moment of ecstasy in which a person can experience an ephemeral moment of understanding. Referring to his sexual escapades, Dean often describes how he has shaped his soul with the woman he finds himself in a relationship with. The “road” is a character in its own right. It unites East and West, but it is not linear in the literal sense of the word because it is often brought back and redirected. Characters often travel separate paths, even if they never truly leave the same “road” because “it could only remain a valid metaphor for freedom if it led out of social entrapment towards a new kind of fulfillment… [it was] allegorical, a quest for the salvation that has prevented civilized man from achieving transcendence” (Newhouse 67). The Road promises the potential for fulfillment and freedom regardless of direction and whose ideologies are most clearly translated in the character of Dean Moriarty. of vision and the communication of that vision to the human community” (Johnston 104). Kerouac, like the Buddhists, sought liberation and enlightenment through the process of suffering and abnegation of all material ties. However, the consequences of a person's karmic actions only cease when one renounces all worldly attachments (Fisher 201). Sal discovers that Dean's life is riddled with attachments that create karmic consequences. Although Dean repeatedly abandons people and places, he fails to do so out of altruism. Instead, Dean freely abandons people only to achieve his own ends, creating a trail of destruction and abandonment in his wake. “You have absolutely no respect for anyone who buys [sic] your damn kicks. All you think about is what's hanging between your legs and how much money or entertainment you can get from people and then you put it aside. (Kerouac 194). In Buddhism, this lifestyle has catastrophic karmic repercussions, preventing the person from realizing true happiness until rebirth. Dean maintains his perpetual characteristics throughout the novel and with his numerous wives, children and followers trailing behind him in his shadow craving his attention and enlightenment; Dean's mania is entirely focused on the pursuit of “IT”. Another critical ideology of Buddhism that the novel refers to is reincarnation. Buddhists believe that until Nirvana (enlightenment, or “IT”) is achieved, the “soul” will be forever reborn in different sentient forms. Sal, while wandering the streets after being abandoned by Dean, has an epiphany and believes he has glimpsed a vision of his past lives: I realized that I had died and been reborn countless times but I didn't remember, mostly because the transitions from life dying and coming back is so spookilyeasy, a useless magical action, like falling asleep and facing the total randomness and profound ignorance of it a million times. (Kerouac 173) This spiritual mystery, Sal believes, is epitomized in Dean. Sal exclaims: “He was BEAT-the root, the soul of the Beatific… the HOLY GOOF… the Idiot, the Imbecile, the Saint of fate (Kerouac194). Sal believes that Dean's "sins" are meant to be committed because they open the way to the freedoms necessary to fully experience and absorb existence. For Sal, Dean was a spiritual leader whose insights into the truth of existence must be respected and emulated under his careful tutelage. Ironically, the novel (although it states that Dean already possesses "IT") never provides direct evidence of Dean's spiritual enlightenment. The concept is neither clearly argued for or against. Dean's pattern of abuse in his research can be interpreted as his lack of true understanding: he is often called a liar and a fraud. But Sal in particular often argues that this freedom must be accompanied by these “abuses” because true freedom must not have any restrictions. In anarchy, Dean argues, lies true freedom. However, direct evidence of Sal's transcendence is given: And just for a moment I reached the point of ecstasy that I always longed to reach, which was the complete step through chronological time into timeless shadows... and the sensation of death that kicked at my heels. move forward, with a ghost at my heels, and myself hastening to a plank where all the angels dived and flew into the sacred void of the uncreated void... countless lotus lands opening into the magical moth swarm of the sky . (Kerouac 173) Sal, however, is privileged to have experienced both Dean's world and his own which provides the right conditions for the primordial soup that becomes Sal's great heroism. It leaves him free to find a medium between madness and the mundane. Dean's childhood never allowed this. Dean's father is always present during the characters' journeys. It's a physical representation of Dean's future if he continues down the path he's on. Dean's symbolic demonstration of the ultimate ideal and manic, irrational frenzy was forced upon him, unlike Sal, from birth. As a child growing up during the Great Depression, Dean never experienced stability, responsibility, or discipline. Kerouac believed in a “disheartening portrait of a broken American home…that the father knows no better” (Spangler 8). At an early age, he is left to his own devices: motherless and with an indifferent father who lives like a vagabond. After an escapade on a train, an eleven-year-old headmaster was left alone to look for work: “I was so hungry for milk and cream that I got a job in a dairy and the first thing I did I drank two liters of hard water. cream and vomited” (Kerouac 140). As an adult, his view of minorities (including women) and his subsequent treatment of them were directly influenced by the fact that Dean had only ever associated himself with the scum of the underworld due to his social positioning dictated by birth. Dean never has a choice or a taste of another life. His attitude is a product of his environment and he never allows himself the luxury of Sal's partiality. Sal has experienced safety and comfort that Dean never had. And although Dean represents how liberating complete freedom can be, Sal weighs the consequences of this freedom and decides that the overall cost remains too damaging. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Personalize Essay In the end, Dean Moriarty finally manages to alienate Sal by abandoning him in Mexico when Sal became too ill to continue their frantic”.