On the Road (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

By SparkNotes

On the Road (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by Jack Kerouac
Making the reading experience fun!

Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster.   Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides:   *Chapter-by-chapter analysis
*Explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols
*A review quiz and essay topics Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers

• Language: English
• Publisher: SparkNotes
• Release date: Aug 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781411476929

Book preview

Part I, Chapters 1-2

Summary

The narrator, Sal Paradise, starts to tell the story: he, with his intellectual friends, was a young writer in New York City in the winter of 1947, depressed and bored, when Dean Moriarty arrived in New York City. Dean has just gotten out of reform school, just married a pretty young blonde, Marylou, and they have come to New York City for the first time, from Denver. Sal heard of Dean before from Chad King and was intrigued--Dean used to write Chad from jail, asking questions about Nietzsche. Sal and his friends go to see Dean and Marylou in a dumpy flat in Spanish Harlem. Dean comes to the door in his shorts; he is occupied with Marylou, and he has to make explanations to her. Dean is frenetic, hyper, and full of ideas. He speaks formally, in long, rambling sentences. Sal's first impression of Dean is that he is like a young Gene Autry, a real representative of the West. They drink and talk until dawn.

Dean and Marylou are living in Hoboken, and Dean has gotten a job in a parking lot. They fight, Marylou sets the police after him, and Dean goes to where Sal lives--his aunt's house in Paterson, New Jersey. Marylou has left Dean and gone back to Denver. Sal and Dean talk about writing in intellectual jargon that Sal admits neither of them truly understand; Dean has come to Sal and his friends because he wants to be a writer and a real intellectual. Sal likes Dean's madness. It is decided that Dean will stay with Sal for a while, and that they will go West together