On the Road Q1

1. On the Road, while classified as fiction, is a loosely autobiographical account of the "Beatnik" writers' travels across America--narrated by Sal Paradise (AKA Kerouac).

What is your impression of Sal as a narrator? Reliable? Unreliable? Explain and cite the text for support.

Now this is a difficult question. In so many ways Sal and the language that he uses is reliable, though in so many ways it is completely biased and scattered. To answer this question we must first look at both sides of the spectrum.
In terms of reliability, there are many ways in which Sal and his writing is very trustworthy. He frequently uses proper nouns, citing the name of every town and of every person he meets. In fact, his listing of the places he travels is extensive to the point of being mappable (if anyone ever wanted to undertake that task). Sal also uses dates and historical occurrences as landmarks to describe the time of his settings. "The country being wild even in 1947" (64). He and his friend Remi talk constantly of President Truman, at one point he recites an accurate jazz history thick with names--"Miles Davis...Louis Armstrong...Sousa...Roy Eldridge...Charley Parker" (163) Sal makes this work easy to place in history, giving it reliability.

Another way we come to trust Sal's narration is his truthfulness in describing dialogue. He cuts off the ends of people's words with apostrophes, uses italics, spells the vowel sounds differently to properly capture the accents of his characters. He lets them say everything they have to say, without summarizing it for the reader. Dean never says "hundreds," he always says "hunnerds." "We used to march 'em like an Army platoon before breakfast. Wasn't one man out of step...Now you take you--from what I've been observing about you, you seem to me a little bit to leenent with the men." (61) Sal doesn't rework the language of those he runs into, he delivers it as is to the reader for us to pick through ourselves. We come to trust that he applies this same principle to other things in his story.

However, this is not the case. As much name-dropping and characterization Sal has in the novel, there are many other ways in which he is completely unreliable as a narrator.

Though the extent of detail to which Sal describes all of his fleeting emotions should count for him on the reliability side of things, the omission of some incredibly important details is even stronger. For instance, the very first sentences, while fully preparing us for the firework that is Kerouac's writing style, also sets up Sal as an ill divorcee. "I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about..." (1) Divorce and sickness, particularly at Sal's age, tend to be life-shaping. Though it says a lot of Sal's character to completely drop these two issues for the rest of the novel, it also leads us to believe he is neglecting to tell us other important aspects of his life. It wasn't till page 101 that Sal mentions the GI Bill (at least not that I noticed), making him a veteran of war. I literally have written in my annotations "GI Bill? WHAT?" If divorce and illness aren't enough to shape a person, war certainly is. The fact that Sal doesn't mention these huge parts of his life make him unreliable to us in accounting his life.

Again Sal is unreliable in that, even when he wants to relate to us the world around him, his states of mind are often so warped from hunger, depression, and drugs that the best of his abilities aren't accurate enough. At one point in San Francisco, Sal is hungry enough to make us drool over the inedible. "There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too; where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths and roasted dry and good enough to eat too." (162) Though with more food in his belly I'm sure Sal would have rather ordered off the menu than eaten it, he makes it sound not only edible, but flavorful. His power to do this can certainly translate to make other things covetable in other altered states of mind that normally wouldn't be.

These are completely beside the fact that, from the point of view of pretty much anyone else in the story save a few, Sal is crazy. "Because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk..." (5) When Sal and Dean stay at Galatea Dunkel's house, not only do Galatea and her friends chastise Dean for being crazy, but Sal for following him around. Sal, though in comparison to Dean seems a sane man relating his tales with a madman, is mad himself. He endangers his life constantly to be with Dean, pays little attention to his looks or basic needs, and thinks nothing of settling down in a society that pretty much created our modern definition of settling down. Even in the end when Sal seems stable with his girl, they're planning on running off together to San Francisco with Dean. Not exactly reliable.

However unreliable Sal may seem, the factors that make him unreliable are undeniable parts of his personality. His denial of the past, his love for drugs, alcohol and vagrancy, and his love of Dean. Though as a historical look into America in the 1950's, Sal Paradise may not be the clearest window, he is certainly an interesting one. Though Sal often ends up being unreliable as a narrator, he is always as truthful to the reader as he is to himself. "On the Road" is the world of Sal Paradise. As inaccurate to what everyone else sees as that may be, we're not reading this book to be in the mind of anyone else.