On the Road (Characters)

Characters

Remi Boncoeur

Remi Boncoeur is a friend of Sal's living in San Francisco with his nagging girlfriend, Lee Ann. Sal takes his first trip west, planning to ship out and work on a luxury liner with Remi. Instead, after writing a screenplay, Sal and Remi get a job guarding the temporary barracks of construction workers waiting to go overseas. The relationship between Remi, Lee Ann, and Sal begins to deteriorate when Remi is unable to sell Sal's screenplay. As one last favor, Remi asks Sal and Lee Ann to accompany him out to dinner, a futile attempt to impress his visiting stepfather. Sal gets drunk and runs into his friend Roland Major, who is also drunk, and they embarrass Remi. Sal, feeling terribly guilty, sneaks away from Remi's shack the next morning. At the end of the novel, Remi visits New York City and is with Sal and Laura the last time that Sal sees Dean.

Ed Dunkel

Ed Dunkel is one of Dean's friends. He works with Dean on the railroad in San Francisco. When they are both laid off, they decide to travel east to see Sal. Ed marries his girlfriend Galatea so she will accompany them and foot the bill. They abandon her in Tucson because she spends all her money staying in hotels. In New York City, Ed tells Sal that he feels like a ghost walking through Times Square. Ed discovers that Galatea is in New Orleans at Old Bull Lee's home and he travels with Sal, Dean, and Marylou to get her. Ed and Galatea live in New Orleans before moving to San Francisco and finally Denver. The last time Sal sees him in the novel, Ed plans to take sociology classes.

Galatea Dunkel

Galatea is Ed Dunkel's wife. Ed marries her in order to get her to finance the trip he and Dean are taking across the country to visit Sal. They desert her in Tucson when she runs out of money. She travels on to New Orleans and stays at the home of Old Bull Lee until Ed comes to get her. She and Ed decide to live in New Orleans. Later, they move on to San Francisco, where she tells Sal that Dean will one day go on one of his road trips and never come back. She ends up living with Ed in Denver.

Frankie

Frankie is the single mother with whom Sal and Dean stay for a brief period when they stop in Denver on their way to New York City. Frankie is a coal-truck driver with four children who likes to drink like a man. Dean tries to convince her to buy a car, but she refuses, angering him. He also creates a scene when he tries to seduce her neighbor's daughter. The men are later forced to flee her home when Dean steals a local detective's car.

Chad King

Sal is introduced to Chad King through the letters Dean writes to Chad from a New Mexico reformatory. Sal describes Chad as being a "Nietzschean anthropologist." Chad is the first friend Sal calls on when he reaches Denver for the first time.

Laura

In the epilogue, Sal meets Laura when he calls to one of his friends from the street outside her apartment building. Laura invites him up to her room for hot chocolate and they fall in love. Sal and Laura agree to move to San Francisco in order to live near Dean and Camille, but Dean arrives in New York City six weeks earlier than planned. Nobody has the money to actually make the move at that time, and Dean is forced to turn around and go back alone. Laura and Sal are on a date with Remi Boncoeur and his girlfriend the last time they see Dean. Dean is in pathetic condition and Laura pities him. Sal tells her that Dean will be all right.

Jane Lee

Jane Lee is the Benzedrine-addicted wife of Old Bull Lee. They have two children. Benzedrine and polio have affected her health. She hallucinates regularly. Sal describes the odd relationship between Jane and Old Bull Lee:

Something curiously unsympathetic and cold between them was really a form of humor by which they communicated their own set of subtle vibrations. Love is all; Jane was never more than ten feet away from Bull and never missed a word he said, and he spoke in a very low voice, too.

Old Bull Lee

Old Bull Lee is the strange, well-educated, drug-addicted mentor to Sal, Dean, and Carlo Marx. He has traveled all over the country and the world. He cherishes individual freedom and despises bureaucracy and the police. He is living in New Orleans with his wife, Jane, and their two children when Sal, Dean, Marylou, and Ed Dunkel arrive to retrieve Ed's wife, Galatea. He is glad to see Sal when the group arrives at his home, and he shares his odd theories and beliefs with him. He is curious as to what motivates Sal and Dean to travel back and forth across the country, but neither can give him an answer. He confides in Sal that he thinks Dean is going mad and he invites Sal to stay with him in New Orleans instead of continuing west. However, Sal leaves with Dean and Marylou when his GI check arrives. Sal later writes letters to him from Denver.

Lee Ann

Lee Ann is Remi Boncoeur's nagging girlfriend. Although Sal is attracted to her, he never acts on his desire. She and Remi argue constantly. The only time she is happy is when Remi takes her out to lavish dinners, which they really cannot afford. She is with Remi and Sal when Remi takes his stepfather out to dinner, and she is mortified by the drunken behavior of Sal and Roland Major. She is no longer Remi's girlfriend when he appears at the end of the novel.

Roland Major

Sal shares an apartment with Roland Major during his first visit to Denver. Roland and Sal spend many nights drinking and discussing author Ernest Hemingway. Roland believes that Dean is a "moron and a fool." Later, Sal sees him in San Francisco while he is out to dinner with Remi, Lee Ann, and Remi's stepfather. Both Sal and Roland are roaring drunk, and they embarrass Remi.

Carlo Marx

Carlo Marx, a New York City poet, is one of Sal's many friends. Sal introduces Carlo to Dean, and they become close friends as well. Carlo follows Dean to Denver near the beginning of the book. In an amusing scene, Sal listens as Carlo and Dean spend hours in a Benzedrine-driven analysis of everything they say and do. Carlo and Dean later visit Old Bull Lee, who is living in Texas at the time. Carlo makes a few other appearances in the novel, most notably in New York, where he poses the famous question: "I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?" Neither Dean nor Sal can answer. "The only thing to do was go."

Camille Moriarty

Camille is Dean's second wife. Dean meets her in Denver and divorces Marylou to marry her. They end up living in San Francisco and having children. Dean regularly leaves her to go on the road. At one point, she throws him out of the house shortly after Sal arrives in San Francisco. Dean later divorces her to marry Inez, but he later returns to her.

Dean Moriarty

Dean Moriarty is the pivotal character of On the Road. His arrival in New York City changes Sal's life. Dean is handsome, charismatic, and exciting. His zest for life and learning is infectious. He finds something to "dig" about every person and circumstance. He dreams of being a writer like Sal or a poet like Carlo, but he can rarely sit still long enough to create anything substantial. However, he serves as inspiration to both Sal and Carlo. Sal believes Dean is a "new kind of American saint" and a "HOLY GOOF." Sal appreciates Dean's instinctive refusal to conform and his philosophy of living in the moment.

Dean also has a dark side. He lived on skid row in Denver with his drunken father through his childhood, and most of his teen years were spent in reformatories. He is a con man, a thief, and an unrepentant womanizer. He can be selfish, deserting his friends when he finds it in his own best interests. His behavior is often dangerous, but of course this is one of the qualities that makes him attractive to so many people. Dean's crazed energy ultimately consumes him. As early as part two, Old Bull Lee suggests that Dean may be going mad. By the end of the novel, Dean is barely able to put together a coherent sentence. He is a pitiable figure at the end of the story. The last time Sal sees him, Dean is wandering in rags on the frozen streets of New York City.

Inez Moriarty

Inez is Dean's third wife. He meets her in New York City when he and Sal arrive from San Francisco. Dean goes to Mexico to get a divorce from Camille in order to marry Inez, who is pregnant. After Dean gets the divorce in Mexico, he leaves the feverish Sal to return to New York City to marry Inez. He promptly leaves her after the ceremony to return to Camille in San Francisco.

Marylou Moriarty

Marylou is Dean's young, flirtatious first wife. Dean meets her in a diner after being released from the reformatory and falls in love with her. Marylou continues to have a relationship with Dean after he divorces her to marry Camille. After the divorce, Dean picks her up in Denver when he decides to meet Sal in Virginia. She travels with them to New Orleans and on to San Francisco. She has an affair with Sal after Dean leaves them on a sidewalk in San Francisco, but she leaves him because he can't support her. Even after marrying Camille, Dean stalks Marylou in San Francisco. He watches her bring home a different sailor every night. Marylou finally marries a used-car dealer. The last time Dean sees her, he gives her a gun and asks her to kill him. When she refuses, he attempts to strike her and breaks his thumb.

Sal Paradise

Sal Paradise is the narrator of On the Road. At the beginning of the novel, he is living with his aunt in New Jersey and writing a book. Sal is an intelligent, romantic idealist with many friends. He meets a charismatic drifter from Denver named Dean Moriarty in New York City. Although Dean is five years younger than Sal, he shares Sal's love for literature and jazz and they quickly become close friends. Sal recognizes that Dean is a shameless manipulator, but he longs to travel and Dean's manic energy inspires him to wander around America in the search of "kicks."

The novel covers approximately four years in Sal's life; during that period, he travels thousands of miles. His travels to Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Mexico City. Along the way he is introduced to many eccentric and interesting characters, and he falls in love more than once. The cross-country journeys that he takes, alone and with Dean, seem pointless to many of the other characters. However, to Sal, each trip itself is far more important than any actual destination. He learns from Dean that the quest to live in the moment is a spiritual one. He searches for meaning in all of his experiences and in all the people he meets on the road because, as Dean tells him, "Everybody's kicks, man!" Sal and Dean see that all of America is "like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there."

Sal's friendship with Dean is, of course, at the center of the novel. Even when Sal isn't with Dean, Dean is never far from Sal's thoughts throughout the book. Although Dean has many weaknesses and faults, Sal loves and admires him in spite of them. Even after Dean abandons him in Mexico City, Sal still considers moving to San Francisco with his girlfriend Laura to live near Dean and Camille. Sal's capacity for love is one of the qualities that make him such a likable character. It is this quality that makes the final scene in the novel, when Sal sees Dean on the cold streets of New York for the last time, so poignantly sad.

Sal's Aunt

Sal lives with his aunt in Paterson, New Jersey, at the beginning of the novel. She nurtures Sal when he returns home from his trips on the road. She bails Dean out when he is caught speeding in Washington, D.C., while he is moving furniture for her from Virginia to New Jersey. At the end of the novel, she is living in Long Island and she advises Dean to take better care of his children.

Stan Shephard

Stan Shephard leaves his parents in Denver to travel with Sal and Dean to Mexico City. He is stung by an unidentified insect as they drive out of Colorado, and his arm swells up. Dean stops in San Antonio to take him to a clinic to get a shot of penicillin and they continue on to Mexico City. Sal never tells what happens to Stan after Dean abandons them.

Terry

Sal meets Terry, a pretty Mexican girl, on a bus in Los Angeles. They have a short, bittersweet romance. They plan to get jobs and save money so they can move to New York City together. When they fail to find jobs in Los Angeles, they go to Sabinal, California, Terry's hometown, to get her son and work in the cotton fields. Sal is frustrated by his inability to earn enough in the fields to support Terry and her son and he decides to return home. Terry promises to meet him in New York City, but Sal knows that they will never see each other again.

Media Adaptations

• There are two audio-book versions of On the Road. The first is an abridged version read by actor David Carradine available on Penguin Audiobooks (1993). The second is a complete version, recorded in 1995 and read by Tom Parker.