HAHA...oh SVT, gotta love ya! everyone has valid points. what a shocker, Sal and Dean aren't going to Italy? But it doesn't surprise me that Dean knocked up a random girl. Everything he does, he never finishes. Camille def knows she made a mistake so i feel bad for her, but if she didn't get with Dean then she wouldn't have had her kids which I'm sure are the center of her life. I'm sick of him tho. Anyway, with Sal, he needs to get a life outside of Dean. Instead of experimenting with the ladies, go out and try to find a new best friend or 'brotha' figure. Even though i hope Sal never sees Dean again, my prediction is he will because you always come back to where you came from. However with Dean, people are just left hangin' so maybe Sal will be another one of the people he uses. Like Jeff said in class, Dean gave himself a contract with marriage but he broke that. So, when him and Sal promised they would be bff , that promise will probably be broken as well.

I have to agree w/ svt about the musicians part. That was the second time a scene like that came up in the book, and I could see why Kerouac would want that in there but it was pretty boring.
When Sal meets Henry and says that he reminds him of young Dean, and proceeds to give him advice, Sal seemed like a father figure to this kid. But the difference between Henry and Dean is that Dean never had a father figure to advise him like that, and maybe that's why he's so impulsive and crazy. And speaking of impulse...at the beginning, Dean seemed to just be stealing car after car within a short amount of time, which was a little strange to me.
There was a quote on page 253 that I liked, where Sal is talking about how his kids would see the pictures Ed Dunkel took one day and think that he and Dean had lived "smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives." Which shows that even though something appears to be one way, it might not be. This is also true of the lifestyle they lead; one would think that traveling all over and doing everything spontaneously would be a lot of fun, but they're not really happy.

I cant wait to finish this book.

No Italy? Shocker! (Sarcasm). I am so mad at Dean, I hate him so much. Now he has 3 kids, count em', 3 and what does he does for them?? NOTHING! He's working in a parking garage to pay child support to Camille but how much is that really going to benefit his two children he had with Camille. Poor Camille. Dean travels around the country with stupid Sal Paradise looking for what? The finest girl in the bar? For some innocent people to give him money to go buy alcohol? Who is this guy?!

At the end of part 3, what annoyed me the most was how Sal kept referring to Dean as his brother and he told many people in this book that they were siblings. Just shut up!! You are not siblings. Does anyone else find this love relationship they have to be ever more then just friendship? Sal is always depressed without Dean and is happier with him. Dean is like a chick magnet but I always feel that Sal loves Dean more than he loves Sal. Oh, another thing annoying me was when Dean proposed to Inez. We don't even know this girl and his drunk idiot self came together to kneel on his knees and propose to a stranger and promise to divorce Camille. If I ever met a guy like Dean, I think I would have to beat him up.

Finally, it what I found weird were the two like really random sections about the music that the group of boys, the beats, were playing. I was not following it at all it was so random and out of place for this book. Also, the whole cars obsession bothers me. Dean and Sal have not had a car so far and been able to travel across America just fine. Now that they steal one and they think they can abuse the privilege. They are street racing, tailgaiting, got into an accident by bumping into the waterbag of another car, and etc. But I did however find it amusing that when Dean was completely drunk he was stealing cars and switching them and driving them to the bar all the cops were in. Hahaha, it even sounds like something he would do without a care in the world.

There are obvious strains in the relationship between Dean and Sal, and I think, in a way, both of them are struggling to grow up a little.
Sal goes to school and whatnot, and starts to be more insightful about his own life, realizing his own loneliness and the social structure of where he lives.
Dean has that weird almost-OD when he sees everything he's done in his life and all those things.
BUT
They still leave YET AGAIN!
And that is so infuriating...
Btw, those descriptions of Dean's thumb were SO unnecessary.
Okay, just kidding, maybe they are essential to seeing that Dean is not immortal. He can be injured. In the beginning, he's portrayed as this wonderful, god-like being, but we're starting to see that he can be hurt.
And I think he realizes that himself. As we said, these guys are terrified of death, and Dean sees that he can die. Perhaps that's why they left on their trip. You know, carpe diem, experience life before they die from infection or an accident or something misfortunate...

hey i wanted to just send in my last blog cause i was coming close to deadline. to finish, if i knew tomorrow was my last day, i wouldn't do my homework; i would do the things i enjoy and would miss if i couldnt do them one more time. But i would definitely spend the with my family which is where i oppose to Dean leaving his daughter regardless if Camille and him got into a fight. With Sal and and Dean, their friendship is bizarre. It is all based off horrible things yet they know basically everything about themselves and do everythng together. Even though they had downfalls, they managed to patch it up. it is all very obscure to me. by the way, if they went to italy i would love it, but i highly doubt it. although like i said, whatever they have their minds set on, is what they are focused on doing.

haha jeff's post was funny; in some way i agree. but first off, can we applaud Camille? ok yeah i hear it. women need to stand up for themselves which was lacking in the book. they needed to get jiggy with it and Camille did just that. Anyway, I do admire Sal and Dean's 'just go for it' attitude but at the same time they have to know their responsibilities. However, even though i love life and and thankful to be here, i think life is a contradiction because we hear all these quotes such as "live everyday as if it was ur last." if everyone lived like that, we wouldnt think about our duties that we have to do for today or tomorrow or for years to come.

Does anyone else get this really creepy feeling about Galatea? She's in love with Ed Dunkel, to the point of an obsession; while throughout the book the characters are constantly reverting back to old girlfriends/boyfriends/spouses, suddenly "discovering" that they're really in love with this or that person that they had been with a while ago, and that it was a mistake to ever leave them. But in Galatea, this takes a different turn, in that the other characters' longing for a previous partner are usually just fleeting, reflective of their own light attitudes on romance and love, with no base on permanence as per their shifting, responsibility-avoiding personalities. Galatea, though, is a believer in the whole "true devoted love" concept, and is made unhappy by Ed's unstable ways; however, instead of either accepting Ed for who he is or letting him go for another more stable person whom she can be fully devoted to and receive the same in return, Ed's rejection of her only seems to make her more focused on him. She grouses over Ed's lack of attention to her, lists all the ways that he has made her unhappy, and yet tries to do the impossible, to impose her own ideals on him. Her comments about death only make her more unsettling, in commanding Sal to tell Ed that if he doesn't come back to her she will find and kill him; she wants him back with her no matter what, even if she has to kill him just to keep him from running off again.