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.