On the Road: Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Sal, Ed, Dean, and Marylou went to Sal’s house in Paterson and slept there. The next day, Sal got a phone call from Old Bull Lee, in New Orleans, who said that someone named Galatea Dunkel had come to his house looking for Ed. Galatea got on the phone and Sal told her that Ed was with them and they’d pick her up in New Orleans on the way back west.

Sal got another call from Camille, in San Francisco, looking for Dean. Dean called her back, while Sal called Carlo Marx and told him to come over. Carlo came, bringing his poetry. He had spent time in Dakar, Senegal, where a witch-doctor told him his fortune. Carlo asked Sal and Dean what reason they were traveling for and then asked, “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”

Dean and Sal drove Carlo back into New York and then drove back down to Virginia to get more furniture and bring Sal’s aunt back to Paterson. Dean told Sal that he was certain God exists and then said, “Everything since the Greeks has been predicated wrong. You can’t make it with geometry and geometrical systems of thinking.”

Dean went on and on about his strange ideas and beliefs. Sal says that “these were the first days of his mysticism.” On the way back to New Jersey, with Sal’s aunt in the car, they got a speeding ticket. Dean had no money, so Sal’s aunt paid for it, so that Dean wouldn’t have to spend a night in jail. Sal says Dean surprisingly paid his aunt back a year and a half later.

Sal drove into Paterson at dawn to find Ed and Marylou smoking cigarettes in his aunt’s house, not having eaten since Sal and Dean left. Sal’s aunt bought some groceries and cooked everyone “a tremendous breakfast.”