first to touch upon the dean=america thing. i looked back at the scene where sal suggests going to italy and it is almost as if dean feels betrayed. he frowns for the first time and i could picture him as being betrayed, sort of symbolising america. also, i think that women play a very untraditional role in this book; just noticed that everywhere sal and dean and everyone elses goes, the women are the providers. this is interesting and very unusual. however, i want to mainly discuss the important theme of the american dream. im curious- what is the dream? they keep "searching" for it but will they ever find it? we, let only they, don't know what they want, nor do they know this concept of the american dream. maybe their dream is to live how they're living- roaming the country and experiencing everything from everywhere. i just think it's interesting and sort of problamatic how they search endlessly for this end, yet they don't know what it is. it is sort of like they know some great thing will happen and they'll have this hallelujah moment and have some great revelation; in reality, they're just lost.