On the Road

Sal Paradise—a thinly veiled pseudonym for the novel’s author, Jack Kerouac—is the protagonist of On the Road. He narrates his experiences of traveling across the country and exploring America. Sal’s life is defined by two relationships: his relationship to his country and his relationship to Dean Moriarty. Sal begins the novel in a dull period of his life. He has recently divorced his wife and recovered from an illness. However, he doesn’t want to talk about his life before meeting Dean, which suggests that his real life begins when they meet. Sal’s boring past is nothing in comparison to the present; he becomes freer, unbound by society’s expectations, and more in tune with a broader conception of the universe. Sal’s perception of America is key to this change. Before the novel, he traveled to places, but his method of travel was dull. As he travels with Dean and hitchhikes with other people, he discovers that the journey itself—the time he spends on the road—is more important. Sal comes to realize that for all the places he visits in America, the journey is more important than the destination. He constantly wants to be somewhere that he’s not: When he’s in New York, he wants to be in Denver; when he’s in Denver, he wants to be in San Francisco; and when he’s in San Francisco, he wants to be back in New York.