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 explains his Buddhist chant over breakfast, then teaches Ray to sharpen an ax before they spend the day splitting logs down in Sean’s yard, which Ray thoroughly enjoys. Japhy tells Buddhist stories about disciples reaching enlightenment when their masters told them that Buddha is dried-up excrement or pushed them into a puddle. He throws a flower at Ray and tells him about the famous “flower sermon” that one Buddhist leader used to choose his successor—Ray throws a banana peel back at him and calls it his “banana sermon.”
Just like hiking, woodcutting is a way to immerse oneself in nature through a repetitive physical activity. Japhy’s stories suggest that it’s possible to reach enlightenment through filth, disgust, and beauty alike. In turn, this reflects the Buddhist belief that everything in the universe has the same fundamental essence, and so it’s possible to understand the universe as a whole by understanding any particular thing. This is similar to how, in North Carolina, Ray realized that the universe is empty while thinking about oranges and frogs.
Themes
Japhy shows Ray a Chinese painting of a boy taming and abandoning an ox, then finding enlightenment in the wilderness and getting drunk in the city. This is a metaphor for Buddhism, and Ray realizes that it describes his life: he tamed his mind in North Carolina, had the epiphany that life is nothingness and started to unlearn his material attachments, and is now celebrating with Japhy.
The painting is a metaphor for how it’s possible to combine nature and the city, virtue and vice, or asceticism and pleasure. Specifically, Buddhists achieve enlightenment by meditating, usually alone and usually in nature. But after they’ve done so, they can return to human society in order to help others learn the same truths and enjoy certain worldly pleasures without becoming unhealthily attached to them. This is why Ray and Japhy enjoy a lively party once in awhile, even though they think that achieving wisdom through Buddhism requires living a peaceful life, free of material attachments.
Themes
In the afternoon, after getting dressed for the evening party, Japhy runs around doing chores and scolds Ray for just sitting in the grass. Ray believes in do-nothing Buddhism, but Japhy insists that “Buddhism is activity.” Japhy meditates a few minutes a day, on a rigid schedule, while Ray constantly lives a semi-meditative, dreaming state.
That evening, the party’s attendees are three couples: Japhy and Polly Whitmore, a beautiful, recently divorced mountain-climber; Sean and Christine; and Christine’s brother Whitey Jones and Patsy, his fiancée. The odd men out are Ray and the burly, blond Buddhist Bud Diefendorf, a former physicist and philosopher. Ray notes that Sean is superstitious and kindhearted, and Whitey is young and naïve. Soon, the three drunken couples start dancing naked. Japhy and Sean briefly force Patsy into the bedroom, which they view as playing a joke on Whitey, and Bud and Ray imagine that they were Tibetan monks in a past life, served by dancing naked women. To avoid feeling lustful, Ray closes his eyes. But soon, everyone gets tired and goes to bed.
As in the painting Japhy showed Ray, the guys view a certain amount of debauchery as a healthy supplement to their dedicated routine of Buddhist meditation and study. But between Japhy and Sean’s supposed joke and Bud and Ray’s comment about naked women, it again becomes clear that the Dharma Bums’ worldview and community are male-centered. When Ray closes his eyes to avoid feeling lustful, however, this shows that he’s still struggling to accept Japhy’s view that religion must embrace sexuality rather than repressing it.
Themes
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The next day, Sean and Christine get plenty of visitors, including Princess, Alvah Goldbrook, and Warren Coughlin, who come to visit Ray and Japhy. One group plays folk songs and eats lunch in the yard, another listens to music and reads inside Sean and Christine’s house, and a third drinks tea and talks about Buddhism in Japhy’s shack on the hill. This repeats every weekend.
These parties are significant because they show Ray and Japhy’s whole circle of poets, Buddhists, and bums getting together. Even if many of them are eccentric loners, they form a broader community based on their shared interests and values.
Themes
Atop the hill one day, Ray points out a kite that can’t fly properly because of its short tail. Bud, who’s overly serious, decides that this is a metaphor for his trouble meditating and obsesses over the idea all day. Later, he decides that he’s a “Buddhafish,” with wisdom as the fin that guides him. During the parties, Ray always naps under a eucalyptus tree. One day, he watches its branches jump and sway like human dancers, and on another, he dreams about Cody, Rosie, and a divine-looking throne.
Bud’s serious commitment to finding the true Buddhist meaning behind everything ironically distracts him from the world around him all day. Much like Henry Morley and the other intellectual poets, he gets caught up in ideas, to the expense of the real world. Meanwhile, for Ray, Buddhism is really about accurately perceiving and connecting to the world. This is why he finds the eucalyptus tree so enchanting: when he sees it dance like a person, he’s really seeing how all beings are connected through movement.
Themes
While Ray is staying with Japhy, he befriends a nosy hummingbird, tries to avoid the rat that lives under the shack, tempts ants with honey, and collects flowers to make bouquets. Meanwhile, Japhy makes fun of Ray for doing nothing all day, chops wood, and chases girls. Even Christine is in love with Japhy. Japhy is also seeing another beautiful girl named Psyche, but he always pressures her to drink, because otherwise she won’t have sex with him. One weekend, she accompanies Ray and Japhy to the beach, where she tells Ray that he has an oral fixation, and Ray makes up Buddhist aphorisms throughout the day.
Even though Japhy initially convinced Ray to seek wisdom, purpose, and peace in nature, now Ray does so all day, while Japhy focuses on other pursuits. Ray sees Japhy’s complicated love life as evidence of his masculinity—which, in turn, he sees as a testament to Japhy’s wisdom and greatness. However, today’s readers might see his behavior as manipulative and his attitude toward women as objectifying. Again, even though their Buddhism gives them a feeling of brotherhood and community with other men, it doesn’t lead Ray and Japhy to treat women as their equals.
Themes
During the week, Ray and Japhy clean up after the weekend parties, and then Ray buys groceries with the remainder of his writing grant money. Several San Francisco bums start visiting them, often for days at a time. Ray loves cooking for them and tries to confuse them by making up contradictory aphorisms. When kids stumble upon the shack, Ray has philosophical discussions or scares them off by pretending to be a ghost.
By spending what little money he has on feeding fellow homeless people, Ray tries to act out his belief in the value of charity. In turn, he spreads Buddhism and creates something of a community around himself, just as Sean’s generosity creates a community around his house.
Themes
