On the Road

Dean flirts with a young girl who lives next door to the house in which he and Sal are staying. The neighbors do not appreciate his interest in their daughter, but Sal manages to calm them down. The girl’s mother threatens Dean with a gun and warns him not to return. In addition, Dean gets into an argument with the hosts, while a woman accuses Sal of using her for food and money. Dean and Sal visit a bar, where a gay man flirts with Dean. The man’s advances anger Dean, and he charges out of the bar and begins breaking into any car he can find. 

In the morning, Dean realizes that one of the cars he tried to steal belongs to a detective. Luckily, Sal and Dean find a well-to-do man who needs someone to drive his car to Chicago. Dean seizes the opportunity to drive the man’s new Cadillac limousine. Dean and Sal prepare to leave Denver. They first drive the man’s car around the city, allowing Dean to bid farewell to a waitress who promised to visit him in New York. Also riding in the Cadillac are two young men heading to a religious school.

Despite Sal’s warnings, Dean can’t help but push the car to its limits. They’re going so fast that the speedometer breaks as soon as they leave the city. He roars down the highway at more than a hundred miles an hour. Even as rain begins to fall, Dean refuses to slow down. He takes a corner too fast and flips the car. Dean goes to a nearby farm for help. The religious boys wonder whether Dean is Sal’s brother. Sal says that he is. Dean fetches the farmer, who uses his tractor to drag the car out of the ditch while his family watches. Sal and Dean can’t help but stare at the farmer’s attractive daughter. They resume their journey, stopping at the home of Dean’s friend Ed Wall. Ed seems suspicious of Dean, but he and his wife provide a meal before the car sets off again. 

Dean speeds across Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. As he drives, he tells Sal about his childhood. He stole cars, lied about his age to find a job, spent time in jail, and then went to Denver. In Denver, he met Marylou when she was 15. As they pass by a group of homeless men by the railroad tracks, Dean thinks about his father. Sal and Dean imagine driving around the entire world in the Cadillac. The next day, Dean’s reckless driving even gets to Sal, and he must sit in the back seat of the car. Later, Dean bumps into another car at a low speed. Although the accident is minor, Dean must go to the police station. The police believe that the car is stolen but call the owner, who backs up Dean’s story. Sal and Dean hit the road again, deciding to give rides to two homeless men they spot. Whenever they stop for gas, the people in the small towns of Illinois stare at them suspiciously. Sal tries to imagine the sight from their perspective, picturing the rogue band of California bandits driving through the state at an obscene speed. They arrive in Chicago in just over 17 hours, meaning that—on the poor roads of 1949—they traveled an average of 70 miles per hour. 

Sal and Dean drop off their passengers. They clean themselves up and then take the Cadillac to visit Chicago jazz clubs. Sal gives Dean a brief history of jazz and bop music, describing the artists who popularized the movement. They listen to music all night, and in the morning, they take the Cadillac back to its owner. By now, the car is rundown and battered. They leave it at the man’s garage and run away quickly before anyone notices how badly it is damaged. 

Sal and Dean catch a bus to Detroit. As Dean sleeps, Sal talks to an attractive country girl. She speaks dully about making popcorn in the evenings. When they arrive in Detroit, Sal and Dean are running low on money. They buy cinema tickets and watch the same two movies on repeat for hours. Sal falls asleep. When he wakes up, Dean says that the theatre cleaners almost swept them away. Sal imagines the cleaners sweeping them away and dumping them in the garbage.

The men spend the next morning trying to pick up girls in bars. After having no success, they try to secure a ride east. A pleasant blond man offers them a ride to New York. Sal and Dean arrive in New York and stay with Sal’s aunt. She has a new apartment in Long Island, where she says Dean may stay for only a few nights. Sal and Dean reaffirm their friendship, insisting to each other that they will be friends forever. They attend a party one night in New York, and Dean meets a woman named Inez. In no time at all, he begins making plans to divorce Camille so that he can marry Inez. Just a few months later, Camille gives birth to Dean’s second child. Shortly thereafter, Inez also gives birth to Dean’s baby. Dean is broke and still swept up in his chaotic life. He and Sal abandon their plans to go to Italy.