On the Road by Jack Kerouac

First published: 1957

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Autobiographical

Time of plot: 1947–50

Locale: United States

Principal Characters

• Sal Paradise, the narrator, a writer
• Dean Moriarty, a young drifter
• Carlo Marx, a poet and intellectual
• Old Bull Lee, an eccentric and a drug addict
• Ed Dunkel, Dean’s simpleminded disciple
• Galeta Dunkel, Ed’s wife
• Remi Boncoeur, a merchant seaman
• Marylou, Dean’s first wife
• Camille, Dean’s second wife
• Inez, Dean’s third wife

The Story

Sal Paradise is living at his aunt’s house in New Jersey while working on his first novel. His “life on the road” begins when he reads letters written from reform school by Dean Moriarty. When Dean arrives in New York with his new wife, Marylou, Sal is impressed with the younger man’s enthusiasm and flattered by Dean’s desire to learn to write. He recognizes that Dean is a con man who is probably conning him as well, but he enjoys his company. Sal is sorry when Dean meets Carlo Marx, a poet with a “dark mind,” for he cannot keep up with Dean and Carlo’s wild energy.

Sal leaves New York in the spring of 1947, planning to hitchhike to Denver and continue to San Francisco, where his friend, Remi Boncoeur, has promised to get him a job on a ship. Sal spends most of his money taking a bus to Chicago. From there, he hitchhikes to Denver and finds Carlo and Dean. Dean wants to divorce Marylou and plans to marry Camille, a young woman he has just met; meanwhile, he is having relations with each of the women in separate hotel rooms. Sal observes as Carlo’s and Dean’s intellectual pursuits dissolve into drunken parties in town and in the mountains. Depressed, he wires his aunt for money and takes a bus to San Francisco.

The seafaring job falls through, but Remi lets Sal move into the shack he shares with his girlfriend, Lee Ann. Sal attempts to write a screenplay for Remi to sell in Hollywood; meanwhile, Remi gets Sal a job as a security guard. After several months, the three thoroughly resent one another, and Sal leaves. On a bus to Los Angeles, he meets Terri, a Mexican woman who has abandoned her husband and son. After two weeks of drinking in Los Angeles, they hitchhike north to Terri’s hometown. Sal and Terri move into a tent, and Sal gets a job picking cotton. Terri’s relatives disapprove of Sal, and he knows he has to leave. He promises to meet Terri in New York, but both of them know she will not go there.

With money wired from his aunt, Sal takes a bus back east, where he works on his book and attends school on the GI Bill. During Christmas 1948, he is visiting relatives in Virginia when Dean arrives in a new Hudson. Dean had married Camille and settled down to work in San Francisco, but one day, he put a down payment on the Hudson and headed east with his friend, Ed Dunkel, and Ed’s wife, Galeta. When Galeta ran out of money, the two men abandoned her in a hotel lobby. Dean picked up Marylou on a detour to Denver and then drove straight to Virginia.

Drawn again into Dean’s orbit, Sal abandons college and a steady girlfriend to take another trip across the country after the usual three-day drunken farewell party in New York. Driving the southern route, Dean steals gas, cons a police officer, and talks like a modern mystic all the way to New Orleans. There, they visit Old Bull Lee, an iconoclast and drug addict from a rich family. They all take drugs and listen to Bull expound his wild social theories. Sal had been the only person actually invited, so the group wears out its welcome quickly. Galeta has been waiting for Ed at Bull’s; the couple decides to stay in New Orleans, while Sal, Dean, and Marylou head for California. Sal and Marylou come to an understanding that they will be lovers when they reach the coast.

Dean abruptly leaves Sal and Marylou in San Francisco. They get a room on credit but are unable to find work. Marylou deserts Sal; Dean finds him starving and brings him to Camille’s house. He and Dean tour the local jazz clubs, and Dean finds Marylou again, but the threesome quickly become disenchanted with one another. Using his next government check, Sal again returns to New York by bus.

In the spring of 1949, Sal wanders back to Denver. A rich girlfriend gives him a hundred dollars, and he rushes to San Francisco to find Dean. Though Dean has fathered another child by Camille, he is still obsessed with Marylou. Furious, Camille orders him to leave the house. Sal proposes that they go first to New York and then to Italy, using the money from his soon-to-be-published book. Dean agrees, but they decide to have “two days of kicks” in San Francisco first. They visit Galeta, whom Ed has abandoned again, and she and other women friends confront Dean with his irresponsibility.

Sal defends Dean, and after an all-night party, they leave for the east in a travel bureau car. Dean takes over the wheel and drives at dangerous speeds to Denver. Sal and Dean quarrel in a restaurant, then make up and go on a two-day drinking binge. Dean steals several cars, but the two escape the police and zoom east at 110 miles per hour in a new travel bureau Cadillac. By the time they reach Chicago’s jazz clubs, the Cadillac is wrecked. Sal and Dean take a bus to Detroit and then another travel bureau car to New York. Five nights later, Dean meets a girl named Inez at a party and proposes marriage. He gets a job as a parking lot attendant, and the trip to Italy is canceled.

The next spring, Sal leaves Dean working in New York and heads for Mexico. Dean buys an old car and catches up with Sal in Denver. Dean, Sal, and a young man from Denver drive through Texas to Mexico. In Gregoria, a Mexican teenager sells them marijuana and leads them to the town brothel, where they have a tremendous party with the blessings of the local police. Afterward, they continue south through the jungles and into Mexico City. They carouse until Sal gets a bad case of dysentery. Suddenly, Dean abandons him, drives back to Inez with a Mexican divorce from Camille. The night he marries Inez, he leaves her and takes a bus bound for San Francisco and Camille.

Sal returns to New York and meets Laura, the girl of his dreams. Dean writes that he will arrive in six weeks to help them move to San Francisco, but he shows up three days later, almost incoherent in his mysticism. Dean visits Inez and suggests that she move to San Francisco and live on the other side of town, but she refuses. The last Sal sees of Dean is when he and Laura leave for a concert with Remi Boncoeur, who had arrived in New York from an ocean liner cruise. Remi refuses to give Dean a ride, and Dean wanders off to take the train back to San Francisco.

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