(On The Road by Jack Kerouac ) Question # 1 :

The novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac was a very difficult read with the way the narrator Sal Paradise talked about everything. As a narrator I found Sal always making me sit there and wonder what he was talking about, making the novel seem much longer then it really was. As I went along with Sal on his adventure and seen, here and did everything that he did, he confused me at many points.

For example, around Part Three Chapter 5 Dean and Sal start talking about something or someone called "IT". I myself haven't figured out what this "IT" is. In the novel Dean says, "'Now, man, that alto man last night had IT--he held it once he found it; (On The Road, 207)'". Then Sal says, "'I wanted to know what "IT" meant (On The Road, 207)'". If the narrator doesn't know how is the reader suppose to know. Sal does go on to talk about "IT" even more, but I still don't understand it to well.

As I noticed in the novel when things began to get confusing with Sal, that's when his best friend Dean Moriarty comes around, this is when Sal becomes a little less reliable in the novel. For instance, in Part One Chapter 13 (between pages 95-98) Sal meets a girl named Terry, while leaving CA. Here without Dean Sal made a lot more sense in what he was doing, whether it was going back to CA with Terry and making up a new plan along with her child. He even seemed to have become a good man as a boyfriend and a father, reliable. In the end when he had to leave Terry and the child behind, he went back to Dean. This is when you get your old confusing Sal.
Basically, as a narrator there are points when Sal is clear as day, dull, and very confusing, but that all comes with the territory and who he is around. I believe that Sal has a half and half thing going on with the reliability.

PS. Sorry if there is anything wrong, I did this from my phone.