Sal Paradise

Sal Paradise

Salvatore “Sal” Paradise is the narrator and the protagonist in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. Sal, an Italian American youth living in New Jersey with his aunt, is an uninspired writer working on a book who follows and accompanies Dean Moriarty, a young and reckless Denver vagrant, on his journeys across America and describes his trips with and without Dean in search of kicks.

On the Road is known as a semi-autobiographic story, and Kerouac admitted himself being Sal Paradise, when journalists asked him if he was Dean Moriarty, who was actually inspired by another Beat hero and a close friend of Kerouac, Neal Cassady. Indeed, the connections between Sal and Kerouac are significant. Jack, coming from a Québécois origin himself, created Sal as an Italian-American based on his life; while Sal lives with his aunt in New Jersey, Kerouac lived with his mother in New York.