Chapter 37 Summary

Having seen the cross, Kerouac begins praying and swears his fidelity to the God of his youth until he is finally assured in his mind that he and his friends will all be saved, and he thereby believes he can sleep. His dreams, however, fill with dark images of copulating vultures with faces that turn to mottled, pasty human faces, all conspiring to fool the young people who come to the work camp that is the setting for his dream, and make them into vultures just like themselves. The darkness of the camp morphs into a long greasy kitchen when, just when his dreams turn darkest, Elliot, who is awake and watching him, thumps his foot on the floor and wakes him up.

He likens the images and confusion that comes to him in his next bout of sleep to the images and...