On the Road (Plot Summary)

Plot Summary

Part One

In part one of On the Road, Sal Paradise, the narrator, is a young writer living with his aunt in Paterson, New Jersey, during the late 1940s. Sal is writing his first novel as he recovers from a failed marriage. In the opening of part one, Sal describes how he comes to meet a charismatic, exciting drifter and con artist from Denver named Dean Moriarty. Sal's curiosity is first piqued when he reads the interesting, lively letters that Dean wrote during his stay in a New Mexico reformatory to their mutual friend Chad King. By the time Dean arrives in New York City with his child-bride, Marylou, Sal is anxious to meet him. Sal describes Dean as "trim, thin-hipped, blue-eyed, with a real Oklahoma accent — a side-burned hero of the snowy West." Soon after the two young men meet, Dean leaves Marylou when she files a false police report after an argument. Dean goes to Sal to learn how to write. Although Sal recognizes that Dean is a con artist, he is inspired by him; he cannot resist Dean's zest for life and his endless search for "kicks" (defined here as almost any powerful sensory experience). Sal introduces Dean to his friend, poet Carlo Marx, and Dean and Carlo become inseparable. However, Dean and many of Sal's other friends head west to Denver in the spring of 1947. Carlo soon follows.

Sal saves up enough money to go west himself in July of 1947. He plans to ship out on an around-the-world liner from San Francisco with his friend Remi Boncoeur after a short visit in Denver. Sal's first attempt to travel west ends in frustration when he realizes he has chosen the wrong route. To make up for lost time, Sal spends half his money on buses to get to Joliet, Illinois. Once there, he begins to hitchhike, and he meets a variety of eccentric people on his way to Denver. He looks up his friend Chad King when he reaches Denver, and he learns that his clique of university friends has somewhat ostracized Dean and Carlo because of their weird, unpredictable behavior. Sal stays with Roland Major, a young journalist, in an apartment owned by the traveling parents of another friend. When Sal finally finds Dean and Carlo, he finds out that Dean plans to divorce Marylou (with the understanding that they will still see each other) in order to marry a woman named Camille. Sal's stay in Denver is a frenetic, ten-day whirlwind of revelry culminating in a wild trip to the Central City Opera. He finally leaves for San Francisco, realizing that he has spent very little time with Dean.

In San Francisco, Sal lives with Remi Boncoeur and Lee Ann, Remi's shrewish girlfriend. Remi, claiming to know a Hollywood director, asks Sal to write a screenplay. Sal becomes bored after finishing the screenplay and takes a job with Remi guarding the temporary barracks for overseas construction workers waiting to ship out to Okinawa. Sal spends more time drinking with the workers than he does guarding the barracks, and Remi makes a practice of burglarizing the cafeteria. After Remi is unsuccessful in selling Sal's script, the relationship between the three roommates deteriorates. Remi and Lee Ann end up having a ferocious fight and, afterwards, as one last favor, Remi asks Sal and Lee Ann to be on their best behavior when they take Remi's visiting stepfather out for dinner. The dinner turns into a disaster when Sal gets drunk and sees Roland Major, who is also drunk, and invites him to their table. Sal regretfully leaves the shack in the morning while Remi and Lee Ann are asleep.

Sal heads for Los Angeles after he leaves Remi's place. He meets a pretty Mexican girl named Terry on a bus and begins a bittersweet, two-week love affair. They plan to hitchhike together back to New York City after saving enough money. After unsuccessful attempts to get jobs in Los Angeles and Bakersfield, they go to Terry's hometown of Sabinal to work in the cotton fields. Terry is reunited with her young son. Sal becomes frustrated because he cannot earn enough in the fields to support Terry and her son. Terry tells him she will join him later in New York. He leaves, knowing he will never see her again. Tired and depressed, he returns to New York City, and ends up in Times Square. He panhandles enough change for bus fare to get to his aunt's home in Paterson. He arrives to find that he just missed Dean, who is on his way to San Francisco, by two days.

Part Two

Sal doesn't see Dean for over a year. He finishes his book and goes back to school. He visits his brother, Rocco, in Virginia on Christmas in 1948. Dean shows up in Virginia in a car with his ex-wife, Marylou, and his friend Ed Dunkel. Dean has left Camille behind in San Francisco with a baby daughter. Although Ed's new wife, Galatea, had originally joined them on the trip, they abandoned her in Tucson because they found her troublesome. Sal and Dean move furniture from Virginia to Paterson, and return to Virginia to pick up Sal's aunt, all in thirty hours. They discover that Galatea Dunkel has appeared in New Orleans at Old Bull Lee's home. Old Bull Lee, an odd mentor to Sal, Carlo, and Dean, is not pleased and wants the men to come and get Galatea. After a brief stay in New York, Sal goes on the road again with Dean, Ed, and Marylou to retrieve Galatea in New Orleans and, from there, go on to San Francisco.

In New Orleans, the group stays at the home of Old Bull Lee and his wife, Jane. Lee is a middle-aged, well-educated, peculiar drug addict who tells bizarre, humorous stories and has strange, yet interesting, theories. Ed is reunited with Galatea and they decide to stay in New Orleans when Sal, Dean, and Marylou leave. The travelers drive west across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, turn north in California, and finally reach San Francisco. Dean, in a hurry to get to Camille, deserts Sal and Marylou on O'Farrell Street. They have no money. For a few days, the two wander around the city, bumming money and sleeping in cheap hotels. Marylou grows weary of Sal and abandons him. Sal is depressed and miserable when Dean finally finds him again. They spend the rest of Sal's stay in San Francisco hopping from one jazz club to the next. Sal begins to get uncomfortable staying with Camille and Dean, so he returns home after receiving his GI check.

Part Three

Sal goes back on the road in the spring of 1949. He returns to Denver, but none of his old friends live there anymore. He works in a fruit market for awhile, but he soon becomes lonely. A rich girl he knows gives him one hundred dollars to travel to France; instead, Sal takes it and spends eleven dollars to get to San Francisco to see Dean again. Sal finds Dean in an awful state; when he isn't arguing with Camille, he is stalking Marylou around the city. He has broken his thumb in a fight with Marylou and his overall health is not good. Camille throws both men out of the house. They decide to go back to New York, and perhaps Rome and Paris after that. On the way to New York, they stop in Denver. Sal gets angry with Dean in a diner, but apologizes to him. They stay with Okie Frankie, a single mother that Sal knows, and Dean causes trouble when he tries to seduce the neighbor's daughter. Later that night, Dean steals several cars, one of them belonging to a local police detective. Sal and Dean flee Denver in fear the next morning. They make their way back east, with stops in Chicago and Detroit. Dean finds yet another girlfriend named Inez in New York City.

Part Four

Sal sells his book in the spring of 1950, and goes on the road again. At first, Dean stays behind with the pregnant Inez, but he later catches up with Sal in Denver. Dean easily convinces Sal to drive to Mexico City with him so Dean can get a Mexican divorce from Camille. They are joined by another friend, Stan Shephard. Driving through Mexico, they stop at a bordello and sleep in the jungle. Once they arrive in Mexico City, Sal gets sick with dysentery. Dean abandons him there to return to his women in the United States. Sal is hurt by Dean's behavior, but he understands the "impossible complexity" of Dean's life.

Part Five

Part Five is the epilogue of the novel. Sal returns to New York City and falls in love with a woman named Laura. They plan to move to San Francisco to live near Dean and Camille. Dean arrives in New York almost six weeks early, and Sal and Laura have no money to move. Dean turns back for San Francisco almost immediately. Sal senses that Dean is close to the edge of a breakdown when he sees him for the last time in a melancholy scene on the winter streets of New York City.