Sal (Reliable / Unreliable) Post 2

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.

I quickly came to like the narrator Sal. When explaining the different settings, Sal was extremely reliable. He was able to successfully describe the situations in a way that, despite the explanation’s length, still intrigued the reader. Sal was a perfect character because he was this pretty normal guy who surrounds himself with all of life’s abnormalities. He was like the base that Kerouac used so that the story would not be too crazy. Every story needs a balance between the normal and the abnormal and in this book, On the Road, Sal was that balance.

Sal (Kerouac) also had a way of perfectly describing the people he ran into so that 60, or so, years later we still visualize the characters. One description that I especially liked was of Gene, a man Sal met on his way to Denver, “Although Gene was white there was something of the wise and tired old Negro in him and something very much like Elmer Hassle, New York dope addict, in him and a railroad hassle, a traveling epic hassle crossing and re-crossing the country every year….” The description Sal gives of Gene is so in-depth that it seems almost impossible to not be able to clearly see that character.