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Part 2, Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On the Road, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom, Travel, and Wandering
Society, Norms, and Counterculture
Friendship
Writing
America
Privilege and Prejudice
Summary
Analysis
After some time at home, Sal went to Denver and tried “settling down there,” with a job in a wholesale fruit market. He would often walk around Denver wishing he were black, because “the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy...not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.”
One evening Sal saw a bunch of young people “of all kinds, white, colored, Mexican, pure Indian,” all playing softball. Sal felt sad and thought the pitcher looked like Dean, while a woman watching the game looked like Marylou.
The softball game can be seen as a metaphor for America, a country that encompass many different races and ethnicities. Sal seems to miss his friends, perhaps even Marylou.
Themes
Sal went to see “a rich girl” he knew, who gave him a hundred dollar bill and told him to take a trip to San Francisco, because he had been talking about it for a while. Sal hitched a ride to San Francisco and immediately went to Dean’s house at two in the morning.
Sal is fortunate enough to have a rich friend who will randomly give him money so that he can go find his happiness on the road. Sal immediately goes to Dean.
Themes
