Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Dharma Bums, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Enlightenment and Nature
Counterculture and Freedom
Friendship
Literature and Authenticity
Inclusion, Exclusion, and Community
Summary
Analysis
In Riverside, Ray plans to camp out in a beautiful riverbed, even though a local man warns him about the police. Ray buys snacks at a supermarket and then trudges down from the highway through the vegetation to the river bottom, where he sets up camp. After sunset, he makes a small fire and feels sorry for himself, realizing that he’s just another homeless man. He eats, prays to become a Buddha, and then quickly prays to God, too, because it’s almost Christmas. He realizes that he’s one with the whole universe—God and Buddha, everything and nothing, time and consciousness itself. He prays for Rosie, too, and then he meditates and goes to sleep. In the morning, he says another prayer to all the life on Earth, drinks from a stream, and prepares to hitchhike all the way to North Carolina.
Profound doubts strike Ray as soon as he starts trying to live off the land like Japhy. In the past, adventuring in nature was something unusual or extraordinary for him—but now it’s his everyday life, and he has no comfortable home to return to. When he notes that he’s a homeless man like any other, he sees himself from an external perspective and briefly understands why, according to the mainstream culture, his lifestyle would be considered a failure. However, Buddhism helps him recenter his thinking and remember that he’s not homeless because he’s failed, but rather because he has a higher purpose that doesn’t fit with the values that American capitalism wants him to live by.
Themes
