Dean Moriarty

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Dean Moriarty is one of the protagonists in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. Dean grew up in Colorado with a hobo for a father for whom he searches on many occasions. Dean races from journey to journey and pulls other people along. His various fixations include drugs, women, intellectualism and finally, his father and family life. His marriage and divorce with Camille and Mary Lou and his last affair with Inez are a few examples of his romantic entanglements.

On the Road is known as a semi-autobiographic story, and Dean Moriarty was inspired by a close friend of Jack Kerouac, Beat hero Neal Cassady.^[1]

[edit] In Popular Culture

Dean Moriarty is the subject of the Aztec Two-Step song, "The Persecution & Restoration of Dean Moriarty (On the Road)."

In Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, Moriarty appears in a Sal Paradyse story, which suggests that Dean is the great-grandson of Sherlock Holmes' arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty. The story has Sal and Dean teaming up with Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain against Kerouac's Doctor Sachs (who is the great-grandson of Moriarty's criminal rival The Devil Doctor), and he also participates in a threesome with Mina and Allan.

Dean Moriarty is also an alias of Benjamin Linus on Lost, as shown on one of his possibly fake passports during the Feb. 14, 2008 episode, "The Economist". Ben uses this name when he visits Tunisia in the episode "The Shape of Things to Come".