Dean Moriarty

Kerouac & Cassidy

Kerouac’s On the Road chronicles the road trip travels of narrating protagonist Sal and his friends, primarily the “Western kinsman of the sun”, Dean Moriarty (7). The novel’s characters travel America countless times in search of adventure, friendship, love, and meaning. Although Sal and Dean have various romantic relationships over the course of the novel, the two male protagonists embark in the novel’s most profound and important relationship.

I have always thought of a true friend as someone who will sacrifice for you in times of need, someone who will suspend all judgment and accept you regardless of action or circumstance. While reading On the Road though, I wondered if I would have remained friends with Dean after he treated me the way he treats Sal at some points in the book, leaving him broke in San Francisco or sick with dysentery in Mexico. Sal knows that Dean will, as Camille warns, “leave [him] out in the cold any time it’s in his interest” (159). However, Sal continues returning to Dean, seeking more adventures, though he has “lost faith” in his friend who is not “concerned about [Sal’s] welfare” (160). Why does Sal keep such an untrustworthy relationship in his life? Throughout the novel, Sal and Dean grow close as well as apart. At one point, as Sal departs for New York, he states, “we were thinking we’d never see one another again and we didn’t care” (167). Just a few months later, though, Sal returns to Dean in San Francisco. Does he go back to his friend for more superficial thrills or true human connection?

After a fight with Dean, Sal admits “You know I don’t have close relationships with anybody any more – I don’t know what to do with these things” (202). Maybe Sal and Dean’s inability to be truly honest with themselves – to face their deep desires for purpose and meaning – translates to their relationship. Their friendship seems superficial: they use each other to temporarily fill up on freedom, adrenaline, and a feeling of wholeness to substitute for their inner emptiness. However, despite each character’s selfishness, their relationship is certainly not black and white. True, Sal romanticizes Dean [“his ‘criminality’ was…wild yea-saying over burst of American joy; it was Western…something new, long prophesied” (7)]. But just because Dean is more concerned with his own issues that with those of his friends does not mean he cannot embark on a friendship. One of the most touching moments of the novel occurs after Dean cries over a fight with Sal. Sal recalls,

It was probably the pivotal point of our friendship when [Dean] realized I had actually spent some hours thinking about him and his troubles, and he was trying to place that in his tremendously involved and tormented mental categories. Something clicked in both of us. (178)

Dean and Sal do share moments of honesty and connection. Their relationship is not rooted in these virtues, as each man struggles with his demons of loneliness and longing; however, Sal at least finds compassion for his friend whose actions verge on unacceptable. Although Sal’s enabling of Dean’s betrayal is not justified; Sal understands and accepts his friends’ emotional shortcomings. When Dean betrays Sal by leaving him sick in Mexico, Sal realizes “what a rat [Dean was], but [understands] the impossible complexity of his life, how he had to leave [Sal] there, sick, to get on with his wives and woes” (289). Whether Sal is a saint or insanely in denial of Dean’s selfishness is left up to the reader. One cannot deny, though, that Sal feels deeply for Dean. Although the reader never gets Dean’s perspective, I believe that on some level Dean cares for Sal as well.

Dean and Sal’s relationship may not be based in trust or honesty, but certainly they share plenty of emotions and experiences. They are not perfect, but their relationship is not totally shallow. Towards the end of the novel, Sal expresses his true affection for Dean, not just his desire to go out for ‘kicks’: “All I hope, Dean, is someday we’ll be able to live on the same street with our families and get to be a couple of old timers together” (241). The romantic idea of growing old with one’s friend symbolizes the longing for stability and contentment that both are searching for “across the Western night” (178).