Privilege and Prejudice Theme Analysis

The ideal world of Sal and his friends is one of freedom—from obligations, from the law and police, from being tied to any one place or even any one woman. But all this has a flip-side: Sal and Dean’s freedom is often predicated on others’ lack of freedom, and is generally only attainable because of their privileged status as white males in America. On The Road often uses marginalized or minority groups to emphasize the eccentricity or weirdness of the experiences Sal and Dean find themselves in. They go into “colored” neighborhoods or run into “queers” in San Francisco. Dipping into these communities allows Sal and Dean to demonstrate how wild and countercultural they are, without having to experience the discrimination that forces these kinds of people into marginalized communities. Dean often says that he “digs” black people, admiring how far outside the mainstream they are and what seem like their eccentricities. But this is not so much a choice (like it is for Dean and Sal) as a burden placed upon them. Sal talks about his running into “queers” for comic entertainment and shock value to the book’s original 1950s audience, but the novel at times seems to harbor resentment toward them—at one point, Dean calls New York City “Frosty fagtown New York.” These marginalized groups are important to the eccentric atmosphere the novel evokes, but they don’t get to play central roles in the plot. This is perhaps clearest with the novel’s treatment of African Americans. Dean and Sal practically worship black jazz musicians, but these people are only peripheral characters at best. While Dean and Sal “dig” aspects of black culture, they generally don’t stop to consider the experiences of African Americans and their endurance of racism and segregation. While picking cotton with Teresa, Sal even romanticizes pre-Civil-War cotton picking, clearly not thinking about the horrors of slavery.

A similar dynamic is at play with women in On The Road. Women like Marylou, Teresa, and Camille are important to the novel’s plot, but are not allowed to become rounded characters with fully fleshed-out inner lives. Sal, Dean, and other male characters often treat women as interchangeable and replaceable. They fall in love with various women, but then suddenly leave and abandon them. Dean’s ideal situation is to have multiple women in San Francisco with him, so that he can spend time with different women at different times. In other words, he expects a woman to stay at home while he goes around to other women and then be there waiting for him when he comes back. His mobile freedom relies on his women lacking theirs. Dean repeatedly abandons his wives to go on the road, because he needs to be free. But what about Camille’s freedom? Or Inez’s? Women are also often insulted by Sal’s narration. They are objectified, considered mostly in terms of their physical appearance, and patronizingly called “dumb” or “stupid.” Sal’s narration also shows a double standard regarding sexual liberty. Sal and Dean try to sleep with women all over the country, all the time, but when Marylou sleeps with numerous men, Sal calls her a “whore.”

On The Road is a story of freedom, of setting out on the road to find oneself and live how one wants to live. But it is important to recognize how privileged Sal is for being able to go on such journeys. Could he hitchhike across 1940s America so easily, for example, if he were black? Or if he had to work to support a family? Or if he didn’t have an aunt who could conveniently send him money? And it is also important to consider how, although Sal prizes his own freedom and madness for life, he often doesn’t respect that of others who are different from him. Kerouac’s novel is a compelling, exciting, thought-provoking representation of a group of friends and fellow-travelers on the road, but not everyone has the ability to set off on the road whenever he or she feels like it, and not everyone is welcome in Sal’s cadre of eccentric friends.