On the Road: Part 4, Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

The group stopped just over the border and bought some beer and cigarettes, pleased at how cheap everything was. They were tremendously excited about being in Mexico and drove further south, into a desert. Sal says that he and Dean “had the whole of Mexico before us.”

Dean told Sal that they were entering “a new and unknown phase of things.” They arrived at the town of Sabinas Hidalgo around seven in the morning. As they drove through town slowly, they saw a group of women, one of whom asked where they were going. Dean said he was “digging” everyone here.

They got back on the road and headed toward Monterrey. Dean said he was high off the Mexican sun. He kept driving through Monterrey for Mexico City. They drove through a swampland with “thatched huts with African-like bamboo walls,” and “strange young girls.”

Sal drove for a while and felt like he was driving across the world, through “the essential strain of the basic primitive, wailing humanity.” Sal passed by what he called “great, grave Indians...the source of mankind and the fathers of it.”

Sal stopped at a gas station near Gregoria and someone named Victor came to his car, saying that he could get “gurls,” (that is, prostitutes) and marijuana for Sal. Victor got in the car and they drove to his house. Sal was worried that Victor’s mother would be upset at him getting marijuana, but Victor said that his mother got it for him.

Victor’s brother brought some marijuana out to the car and Victor rolled a huge joint, which everyone (including Victor’s brothers) smoked. Dean and Sal liked Victor and his brothers, though they couldn’t understand what they were talking about in Spanish. For a moment, Sal thought Dean could understand Victor speaking in Spanish.

Sal says that Dean looked like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and like God. Victor brought over his baby son to show to everyone. Dean said it was the prettiest child he’d ever seen. Victor then showed Dean, Sal, and Stan to the brothel. They played music on a jukebox as loud as they wanted, which Sal says he never could do in America.

Dean, Sal, and Stan danced with the prostitutes, and then went off with different ones. Sal wanted to sleep with “a sixteen-year-old colored girl,” but gave up when the girl’s mother came in and talked to her. After sleeping with one woman, Sal went off with Dean’s original woman, but this woman was too drunk, so he went with another one. The three of them drank and slept with different prostitutes until nighttime.

The whole time, Sal kept thinking of the sixteen-year-old girl. Victor finally showed Sal the bill for everything, which was over three hundred pesos. Sal walked outside and remembered he “was in Mexico after all and not in a pornographic hasheesh daydream in heaven.”

Victor took them all to a nearby bathhouse, where Stan and Sal showered. Victor was sad to see them all go, and asked them to come back. Dean said he’d take Victor to the U.S., but Victor said he probably couldn’t go because he had a wife and kid and no money.