A lot of recent comments have dealt with Sal's nature. Many of us have tried to answer the question: who is he? The answer to that may be based as much in the real world as in the text. Sal is based on Kerouac himself, and this may reveal a great deal about his character. I have been thinking about the fact that the Beats were extremely intellectual and deep. With their spontaneous poetry and intellectual ideas, it surprises me that they hitchhiked and the like. To me, that is not representative of an intellectual movement. To determine who Sal is, I feel we must consider this paradox of the Beat movement. Sal is undecided, and often his actions seem irrational or strange because of the paradox that surrounds his character.