What is your impression of Sal as a narrator? Reliable? Unreliable? Explain and cite the text for support.
Sal Paradise is very much a follower. This is made abundantly clear through his constant travel back and forth across the U.S with Dean Moriarty. I honestly think a follower is perfect for the roll of a narrator, and Sal does extremely well. I don't really think you can call a narrator reliable or unreliable, as it's someone's point of view, but seeing as Sal is basically Kerouac, that's as reliable as you get. If he was unreliable, we wouldn't have a very good story. Kerouac uses very descriptive language and through this, Sal paints beautiful pictures of the places they visit. "We were in the mountains: there was a heaven of sunrise, cool purple airs, red mountainsides, emerald pastures in valleys, dew, and mesquite." (164) I could see how beautiful the mountains surrounding them were, and often while reading this story, I felt like I was right next to Sal, in strangers' cars, experiencing his and Dean's travels first hand. As silly as I know that sounds, his observations make that happen. Sal wasn't only good at being descriptive this way, but he had a way of summing things up that made no sense, and perfect sense at the same time. "If you sifted all Detroit in a wire basket the beater solid core of dregs couldn't be better gathered." (245) This essentially meant that the dregs of society could easily be found at the all night movies in skid row. He, however, explains that better than I just did. I've never read a book that could be so concise, and yet, have such beautiful description.
3 comments:
I really liked your observation that Sal is a follower. I hadn't really noticed that, but once I read your post, it seemed so obvious. He follows everyone, Terry, Remi, Dean. He's a wanderer, and he doesn't really have his own plan, so he just goes along with everyone else. He lets people pick girls for him, get him jobs, and change his direction.
I also totally agreed that his descriptions really make the story. :The story seems kind of thin, but his descriptions add so much life to it. It's like Sal wants you to get as much out of life as he does, through the descriptions.
I completely agree that Kerouac/Sal has a beautiful way with language, and also that he makes no sense and complete sense at the same time. The quote you talked about sounds extremely similar to the one I mentioned, and this makes it even clearer that Sal cannot resist an opportunity to use adjectives.
I'm not sure what you mean about a follower making a good narrator; do you mean that he is more likely to accurately document experiences because he's only along for the ride?
I'm still wondering what Kerouac wanted his readers to get out of it. I definitely enjoyed this book, and I know what I came away with, but he did write it as an almost personal account, a story in the way that we don't really think of stories as anymore, because now they're resolution-heavy novels. And I love it this way. He edited it for years, so there's no doubt he wanted it public, but there's so much left to interpretation you start to wonder why he trusts you as a reader to chew it for yourself, when it was something so sacred to him.
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