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
Japhy invites Ray to stay with him in his shack in Corte Madera, north of San Francisco, behind Sean Monahan’s cabin on top of a hill. In mid-May, Japhy will be sailing to Japan to study at a monastery. But in the meantime, he’s helping Sean cut firewood in exchange for cash for groceries. He spent the winter back in the Pacific Northwest, climbing and visiting friends in the woods.
Back in California, Japhy continues to live the same outdoorsy lifestyle that he’s convinced Ray to follow. Of course, he’s only able to do so because of his work arrangement with Sean Monahan, but this shows how he and Ray view work: not as the purpose of life, but as a means to an end (buying time to focus on meditation and writing). His plans to visit Japan suggest that he’s serious about taking his Buddhism to the next level and finally directly engaging with the cultures that have influenced his thinking.
Themes
Ray gets to California by hitchhiking. First, he hitches a ride down to sweltering South Carolina and over to rainy Georgia. Then, he catches a bus to Gainesville, Florida, where he plans to hop a train—but he sees that there are police officers at the railyard, so he rents a cheap hotel room instead. The next day, Ray hitchhikes up past Atlanta, but then he catches a ride with a reckless drunk driver and decides it’s safer to stick to buses and trains. He then catches a series of buses to El Paso. When he arrives, he spends a blissful night out in the desert, like he always dreamed about doing. Ray sets up camp behind the railroad tracks at an overlook point, where he can see across the Rio Grande into Mexico. He sleeps soundly under the full moon.
Like all his hitchhiking trips, Ray’s journey to California is unpredictable, and it forces him to constantly adapt to new circumstances. But that’s part of why he prefers to travel this way: it’s adventurous and exciting, and it shows him slices of American life that he’d never be able to see otherwise. Nevertheless, he always returns to nature: his night camping in the desert allows him to again spiritually center himself.
Themes
The next day, Ray cooks pork and beans over an open fire, then crosses the border to Ciudad Juárez. After visiting a church and market, he finds himself at a bar, yelling at some local men in Spanish about the vacuity of the desert and the universe. He ends up in their house, where they smoke marijuana and take some of his things—and one of them falls in love with Ray. After visiting a bar full of prostitutes with them, Ray crosses back over, leaving the “evil city” for the “virtuous desert.” He returns to his campsite and ponders everything Japhy taught him. He meditates and enjoys the desert’s utter silence, in which he hears the silent roar of wisdom, truth, and purity.
Ray’s adventures in Ciudad Juárez exemplify his willingness to engage in both spiritual pursuits in nature and worldly pleasures in civilization. His contrast between the “evil city” and the “virtuous desert” highlights the way he combines the binary of nature and civilization with the moral values of good and evil. Following after Japhy, he views nature as pure, good, and spiritually fulfilling—whereas other people are spiritually misguided and full of vice. This is why Ray and Japhy spend as much time as possible in nature: it’s the ideal place to pursue Buddhist wisdom.
Themes
