English 2000 Perspectives in Literature

David from Giovanni’s room and Dean from on the road are similar in many ways. For one they are both on the outside looking in wishing to be like who they admire. David is a homosexual who really wants to be society’s normal and be straight but he can’t help him self.  Dean is a person who wants to be like people he doesn’t really understand but he likes the type of people they are. Another thing that makes them similar is that they both don’t really know what they want in life cause David finds a man named Giovanni who is very care free and free spirited and he is interested in him in the idea of being homosexual. Dean finds people that he wants to be like and then he looses interest in them and then we wants to be like someone else. They are different because David  is struggling to find himself and figure out what to do in life and Dean is a man who doesn’t know much about the many kinds of people in the world.

           The concept of “home” functions as two different ways in the novel, in my opinion. The first function is as normalcy, safety,routine and structure for Sal; it’s the place he escapes from and returns back to after he has been “on the road”. “It was October, home, and work again. The first cold winds rattled the windowpane, and I had made it just in time (99)”. However, the home that Sal makes with Terry is completely different he is content and happy with the simplicity of the lifestyle. He works and makes enough just for dinner for the night, and most importantly he is the man of the tent and he has his own family.”Johnny and I played all the time; he liked me to throw him up in the air and down in the bed. Terry sat mending clothes. I was a man of the earth, precisely as I had dreamed I would be in Patterson (90)”. He was living his dream family life even though he wasn’t back in his normal life.

           However his dream didn’t last long because Sal got tired of doing the chores and working just to survive, so he left Terry and Johnny. In contrast to David in Giovanni’s Room, David never really had a home because even when he went back home to the United States he was’t happy or really being himself. Sal had a home and a life to return back to even though he saw it as boring, David didn’t have a home to go back to.  Their styles in leaving was also completely different.  David’s style was passive-aggressive,and he  decided to walk out and leave without and explanation or a goodbye. Sal did let Terry know he was leaving and did say goodbye. However, their “flight” was both because life got rough and they couldn’t take it or handle it and so they left. David always left because he was running away from the truth, so he decided to always let the truth come out in a callous and ruthless way. Sal always left when he got tired of life “on the road” and wanted to go back to his life, especially since his Aunt’s money was always a phone call away.

“And this was really the way that my whole road experience began, and the things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell”, state Sal. According to this quote, “the road” represents freedom and experience. For Sal, it means he can make his own mind and decisions. Also, Sal learns a lot during his hitchhiking by meeting new friends and visiting different cities, “the greatest ride of my life”. For that reason, he sees things differently than before due to his experiences from NY to San Fransico.

In the novel On the road have several characters that I feel are very similar to some that where in Giovanni’s room. But Sal is one character in particular that I feel is very similar to Dave from Giovanni’s room. Sal in part one meets a girl at a bus station and he began to talk to her and slowly they began to like each other. Then he slept with her that same night and they stayed together for some time till Sal felt like he had to go back to New York. Sal reminds me a lot like Dave because Dave a lot began to like Giovanni and slept with him on the same day. Dave has a longer and more detailed conversation with Giovanni but he knew he liked him the moment he saw him or at least found him very attractive. Sal states in the beginning of chapter 12 : “I saw the cutest little Mexican girl … Come across my sights”.   This shows how Sal and dean compare. A major difference these 2 characters may have would be that one likes a girl and the other a man .

Alex Vicuna

“The road” in this novel represents anew pathway towards a different perspective regarding Sal’s uninteresting yet troublesome lifestyle. The symbolism of “the road” interprets Sal’s new journey as well as experimentation into Dean’s exciting and jaunty life experience. For Sal’s point of view regarding symbolism, he is struggling through experiences of life itself. In simpler terms, he is struggling the complexity of undergoing through adolescence and maturity difficulty. Whilst Dean’s point of view, “the road” is very self-explanatory the fact he’s always on the road meaning he’s always on the move, rather adventurous. Sal strives for that sort of lifestyle rather than living his, which envy brings into play.

1. Although some might agree that Dean is the center on the novel I disagree and believe that he is actually more of  an inspiration to Sal than to say that the story revolves around Dean. Deans behavior and lifestyle represents a freedom that Sal wants to write about/experience with females and friends. At first it seems like he wants to be “Dean” but when it all comes down to taking “Dean’s” possessions (ex his wife) he can’t. “Louanne (Marylou) lay there, with Neal (Dean) and I on both sides of her poised on the upjutting mattress-ends, not knowing what to say. I said “Ah hell I can’t do this.”

The concept of home in this novel is determined in different ways. One is when Sal lives with Terry and feels like he has a family and played “house” for a while. Going to new places and seing so many different people started to make him feel like he was part of their way of  living. “They though I was a Mexican, of course; and in a way I am” (pg. 98) he says, because after a little bit more than fifteen days of good and hard times with Terry they managed to stick it out. He felt like he belonged especially because he though things would work themselves out and they would figure out a way to make some money in which  he would be able to provide for Terry and Johnny. Sal feels at “home” when everything seems to be going smoothly but when he realizes and says “what kind of old man was I that couldn’t support his own ass, let alone theirs?” (pg.96) he sees that things aren’t as easy as he thought they would turn out to be. This makes him give up and he becomes tired of working in the cottofieldand and he leaves Terry . This relates to David in Giovannis Room because when things didn’t go his way or he couldn’t accept the circumstances he was in, he would find a way out and run from the situation instead of sticking it out.

From what I read so far, I think Dean is playing a important character in this book. In the beginning of the chapter, most of the story is about how Dean meet his wife, move to New York, mad with his wife, be friend with Carol and more. From these evidences, and what i know so far, i think the author maybe want him to be the important character in this story.