On the Road, Jack Kerouac. Cycle 26 Reading Response, pages 86-108

Sal and his new love, Terry, head down to Los Angeles. Sal gets to experience the West that he traveled across the country to experience, but he longs for New York. They wander around Los Angeles until they make a plan to work picking grapes in Bakersfield, but instead hitchhike to Sabinal to live with Terry's brother. They meet up with her brother, Rickey, his friend, Ponzo, and Terry's young son, Johnny. Rickey had just been kicked out of his house by his girl, so they all rent a tent near the cotton field where they are to work picking cotton. Rickey and Ponzo have a scheme to make money by selling manure, but their plan never materializes, so they rely on Sal and Terry for a place to stay. Johnny, Terry, and Sal work picking cotton. They pick cotton for a while and are doing okay, until the cold weather comes and they decide to leave and live with Terry's family. Terry and Johnny stay with them, but Sal stays with a farmer up the road, but Sal gets restless and he decides to go back to New York. They plan to meet up in a month. Sal heads back down to LA, then from there he catches a bus going east. He travels back to New York and returns to his aunt's house. He finds out that Dean had stayed there just weeks before, but Sal missed him.

bop caps: "Wild Negroes with bop caps and goatees came laughing by..." (p. 87)
hinterlands: "Great families of jalopies from the hinterlands stood around the sidewalk..." (p. 87) noun, the often uncharted areas beyond a coastal district or a river's banks, an area lying beyond what is visible or known
hincty: "Handsome queer boys...wetting their eyebrows with hincty fingertip." (p. 87)
grotto: "Terry and I ate in a cafeteria downtown which was decorated to look like a grotto..." (p 88) noun, a small picturesque cave, especially an artificial one in a park or garden
cowflaps: "That night Ponzo said it was too cold and slept on the ground in our tent, wrapped in a big tarpaulin smelling of cowflaps." (p. 95) noun, a flat, round piece of cow dung
hamburg: "...Rickey showed up with a loaf of bread and a pound of hamburg." (p. 95) noun, another term for hamburger
ante-bellum: "They picked cotton with the same God-blessed patience their grandfathers had practiced in ante-bellum..." (p. 96) noun, what occurred or existed before a particular war, especially the American Civil War
Susquehanna: "It was the night of the Ghost of Susquehanna." (p. 104) noun, a river in the northeastern United States that has two headstreams, one that rises in New York and one in Pennsyvania, both of which meet in central Pennsylvania, then flow to Chesapeake Bay
hoorair: "...and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York..." (p. 107)
huarache: "...my canvas bag had torn cottonfield pants and the tattered remnants of my huarache shoes in it." (p. 107) noun, a leather-thonged sandal, originally worn by Mexican Indians

Sal met Terry on his way to Los Angeles, then went there with her. After that, they continued their travels in California, but Sal grows restless and heads back to New York. This is how I imagine Sal's time with Terry if Terry was the protagonist.

I love Sal. He's so unlike anyone else I have ever met. He's smart, and sensitive, and listens to my stories after he tells me his. Right now, we're coming back from the fields. I can tell that there's something that he's not telling me. Ponzo and Rickey stayed in the tent with us again last night. I know Johnny likes them around, but I think Sal doesn't. I still remember when Ponzo liked me. I think he knows that Sal is for me now, but maybe Sal doesn't know that my thing with Ponzo is in the past. Now Sal is the one that I love the most. It's very quiet. I'm worried about Sal. He's quiet when he's thinking too hard. He's been thinking too hard for too long. Maybe it's where we are. It is getting cold here in the tent at night.

I told Sal that we should talk. I'm getting worried about him. I love him so much that I want to be with him, but I don't want him to be unhappy. I tried talking to him. The rent was due and we had to decide. "Go back to your family," Sal said. When he talks like that to me, yelling forcefully in that way, it makes me want to cry and return to the time before I knew him. "For God's sake, you can't be batting around tents with a baby like Johnny; the poor little tyke is cold." I started crying. Who is he to question me? I have done what's best for Johnny. He shouldn't doubt my decisions as a mother.

So we went back to visit my family. All my family came to meet Sal. They had heard about him, thanks to the gossip my family spreads about anyone, even their own. I was embarrassed. I couldn't tell what Sal was thinking. He's just so sad these days. It seems like his mind is not here.

Sal decided to stay in a farmhouse that my cousin once stayed in when he ran away from home. I couldn't leave him there without anything. I brought him dinner and cloth to keep warm. I wanted to stay with him, but Papa was calling for me. He was angry. When he gets angry after drinking, he always yells for me. I had to leave Sal in the farmhouse until Papa when to sleep. Once he was asleep, I returned to the farm house. No more yells called me back to Papa and I could be with Sal. I was angry though. Papa told me that I need to go back to work. He told me that I couldn't fool around. "Sal," I said, "take me to New York with you." He didn't say yes. "But how?" was his reply. I knew that we were not meant to be together at that moment, and I had to let it go so I could move on and return home.

The next day, Sal was going to leave. I met up with him in the field. I had his breakfast I made, he had his stuff he packed. We kissed once, then we left.

On the Road, Jack Kerouac. Cycle 25 Reading Response 60-85

Sal finds his way to San Fransisco. He stays with his friend Remi Boncoeur and his girl, Lee Ann. They stay in Mill City, an voluntarily integrated neighborhood. He tries writing a screenplay, and Remi takes it down to Hollywood to show to a producer, but it doesn't get made into a movie. Remi gets Sal a job as a guard in the barracks, just to make enough money. To make ends meet, they steal from the kitchen of the barracks. They go to the racetrack, but Remi loses almost all his money. He borrows money to take his stepdad and his new wife out to dinner to impress them, but they see Ronald Major, whose drunkenness ruins the evening for everyone. Sal gets swept up in it and ruins the dinner, so Remi is furious and their friendship is ruined. He decides that the west isn't what he thought it would be and plans to head back out east to New York, but wants to go back through the south. He heads to L.A. and meets a Mexican girl, Terry. They sit together on the bus then sleep together.

treed: "...it was a canyon, and a deep one, treed profusely on all slopes." (p. 61) adj, resembling the branching structure of a tree
contingent: "The contingent shipped out..." (p. 69) noun, a group of people united by some common feature, forming part of a larger group
harangues: "The September rains came, and with them harangues." (p. 73) noun, a lengthy and aggressive speech
lugubrious: "Oh, it was sweet and delicious and worth my whole lugubrious voyage." (p. 84) adj, looking or sounding sad and dismal

Like Sal's other friends in On the Road, Jack Kerouac based Remi Boncoeur on a real person. Henri Cru first met Jack in prep school, then they later shared apartments in New York and California. By the episode in On the Road, they have been friends for quite a while, maybe 10 years. I think, just based on the way Sal and Remi interact and how Sal talks about Remi in the novel, that Remi is Sal's closest friend. He's different than the other people they know. Remi isn't trying to revolutionize the way Sal's other friends seem to. Remi is not trying to get away from his current situation with his mean girlfriend Lee Ann in a ramshackle neighborhood, as long as they make ends meet and don't fight too much. I know Remi wants more, but he doesn't make a noticeable effort. He tries to impress his stepfather, but does not succeed, at the fault of Sal. This is the thing that breaks their friendship. Sal was not thinking, but acting impulsively and immaturely. Maybe it was because Ronald Major was there and he felt that he needed to be someone different. We all find ourselves in this situation. We act one way around some people, and differently around others. We may do something with one group of friends because everyone else is doing it, and you do want to be the baby who's too afraid to do it, then complain about people who do things like that to another group of friends. Everyone does this. I think that this really hits Sal in this situation. Remi is his closest friend, but also his most under-appreciated. Remi is there when Sal needs a place to stay and a paying job in a strange city. Ronald Major is the friend who shows Sal a good time. Maybe it was his desperation finally catching up to him, or his inability to settle into something, but something made him mess things up and choose Ronald over Sal. Him drastically changing his actions just with the addition of another person wrecked things for the person he really cares about. I think this is part of his transformation, part of the process where he chooses which side he is on between his friends. I just hope that he deals with the fact that he acted in a way which probably permanently lost him a friend.

On the Road, Jack Kerouac. Cycle 24 Reading Response, pages 36-59

Sal arrives in Denver and finds his friends who are living there. He finds them divided between the criminals and intellectuals and the hipsters, like the rest of his generation. During the ten days of his stay in Denver, he spends time with both sets of friends. He goes to Dean's, his criminal friend, house and witnesses the complex life he is leading sleeping with woman after woman and staying up all night talking to their more intellectual friend, Carlo. He sees the division between them and his other friends, who take him up to Central City in the mountains, where he lives the life of a socialite with attending the Opera and throwing wild parties, as well as hitting the town and getting into bar fights. When he returns to Denver, he finds out that Carlo and Dean were there at the same time as him and his other friends, which just shows how the gap between the two groups is widening. He sleeps with a girl that Dean found for him, then decides that he has done all he can in Denver and moves onto San Fransisco.

choleric: "...Major sat in his silk dressing gown composing his latest Hemingwayan short story -- a choleric, red-faced, budgy hater of everything..." (p. 40) adj, bad-tempered or irritable
ikon: "...and a crazy makeshift ikon of some kind that he had made." (p. 47) noun, variation of spelling of "icon"
chichi: "We drove up the mountain and found the narrow streets chock full of chichi tourists." (p. 51) adj, attempting stylish elegance but achieving only an overelaborate effectedness
sabot: "Then there's Normandy in the summers, the sabots, the fine old Calvados." (p. 53) noun, a kind of simple show, shaped and hollowed out from a single block of wood, traditionally worn by French and Breton peasants
clubfooted: "...and Tom Snark, the clubfooted poolshark." (p. 59) adj, have a birth defect where the afflicted person often appear to walk on their akles or sides of their feet.

Even the closest of friends can become divided. Sal had a fairly large but still close group of friends when he lived in New York, most of whom went to Denver. He met them out there in the West, but he didn't find things with his friends as they were back east. While there had always been a little bit of a divide, the division of the two groups of friends widened when they left the east and discovered themselves out west. On one side there were Carlo Marx, Dean Moriarty, and Old Bull Lee. The other side had Chad King, Tim Gray, Ronald Major, and Ray Rawlins. Sal's time in Denver opens his eyes to this divide. He can see it becoming wider, but he finds himself stepping into it during his travels west.  

As I mentioned before, On the Road is at least partially autobiographical. These characters in the story are based on real people in Jack Kerouac's life. The actual Dean Moriarty is Neal Cassady, who played a big role as a part of the Beat Generation in the 1950's, just after Sal's first trip in the book, and then in the psychedelic movement of the 1960's. Carlo Marx is Allen Ginsberg, who fought against materialism and conformity with his poetry as a member of the Beat Generation. Old Bull Lee was actually William S. Borroughs, who was known as a drug addict and gun enthusiast. His writing and poetry were considered controversial.

On the other side of the divide is Chad King, who was, in real life, Hal Chase. Tim Gray was Ed White. Both of theme were Kerouac's friends from Columbia. Ed White was not a poet, like many of Kerouac's other friends, but an architect. Allan Temko, who is referred to as Ronald Major in On the Road, was also an architect. Ray Rawlins, or Bob Burford in On the Road, is another non-poet friend of Kerouac, but combines the writing aspects of some friends and layout capabilities of the architects, in his profession as a magazine editor. 

Jack Kerouac's friends seem like an interesting group. You have criminals and creators, anarchists and architects. Although I'm not sure, I'm guessing that Jack will end up siding with the more dangerous group. I think that he will be drawn to them, since they have what he thinks he lacks. He seems like someone who is not a leader, but a follower. His personality now ddoesn't allow him to be adventurous. He went out west with the knowledge that his friends were already out there, and at the urging of his aunt. Even though he is like this now, I think that he'll become more and more like them as he follows that group and not the other. One does not truly know his or her identity until they have to show it to someone, the way the only way to really know a subject is to have to teach it. I think that, after a while with the group, he won't be the follower anymore, but there will be a new guy who will follow. When this happens, I think that Kerouac will find himself with a stronger sense of identity. Through this story, I think that Jack will find his identity shaped by his friends, then solidified, but he will always be reexamining who he is in his surroundings and in his words. 

On the Road, Jack Kerouac. Cycle 23 Reading Response, pages 1-35

This story starts with the protagonist talking about one of the guys in his group of friends in New York, Dean Moriarty. His life in New York was filled with his friends, either intellectuals or criminals, who made life exciting by spontaneously traveling across the country. In July 1947, the protagonist, which, since this is for the most part autobiographical, is the author, Jack Kerouac but is referred to as Sal, decides to go to the West Coast. He heads west as a bus rider and as a hitchhiker. He ends up in Denver, where all of his friends are.

jalopy: "...his parents were passing through Salt Lake City in 1926, in a jalopy, on their way to Los Angeles." (p. 1) noun, an old and dilapidated car
dichotomy: " '...but the thing that I want is the realization of those factors that should one depend on Schopenhauer's dichotomy for any inwardly realized...' " (p. 3) noun, a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different
phosphorescent: "As we rode in the bus in the weird phosphorescent void of the Lincoln Tunnel..." (p. 4) adj, having the quality of light emitted by a substance without combustion or perceptible heat
lout: "Their energies met head-on, and I was a lout compared..." (p. 5) noun, an uncouth or aggressive man or boy
benzedrine: "....Jane wandering on Times Square in a benzedrine hallucination..." (p. 5) noun, a type of hallucinogentic drug
bevies: "There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked..." (p. 15) noun, large groups of people or things of a particular kind
alackaday: "Well, alackaday, I kissed the shirt good-by..." (p. 21) exclamation, an expression of regret or dismay
sardonic: "Montana Slim spoke to them occasionally with a sardonic and insinuating smile." (p. 23) adj, grimly mocking or cynical
rawboned: "In my earlier days Id been to sea with a tall rawboned fellow from Louisiana..." (p. 26) adj, having a bony or gaunt physique
tarpaulin: "...the best thing to do now was for all of us to bundle up under the big tarpaulin or we'd freeze." (p. 29) noun, a heavy-duty waterproof cloth

Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road" is a partially autobiographical story of trips that he took in his youth. In the novel, Sal Paradise is Jack Kerouac. He is living in New York and writing. Language is intertwined in the story. At its center is the desire to experience more. Sal said that his friendship with Dean Moriarty was giving him experiences he can write about. The way he talks about his friends, especially Dean, it seems like he is unsure about who he is and who he wants to be. His language that describes Dean is admiring and more specific than that of an acquaintance would be. It shows his admiration of Dean, which affects the things he does and who he is. On the road to Denver, he hears people speak from all over the country. Their different accents and words capture their hometown and show who they are. For example, a hobo and the youth that travels with him are basically the same in appearance, but contrast in their language. The hobo is eager to converse with Sal and share stories of the road, while the younger hobo is reluctant to talk to anyone. The language used to describe and used by the characters help to differentiate them from others and provide them with their own identity. On the road, I think that Sal will grow and discover more about himself through his experiences. The question is, how will he convey it in the language of his writing?