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
Ray and Japhy get into a fight in San Francisco: Ray wants to get drunk in an alleyway, but Japhy thinks that Ray drinks too much. Japhy would rather go to the Buddhist Center for a lecture instead. When Japhy refuses to drink, Ray finishes his bottle and buys another. The two of them get haircuts and buy secondhand clothes on Skid Row, and then they take a ferry across the San Francisco Bay. Japhy drinks a little and then reads a poem he wrote about Ray’s haircut and again criticizes his drinking, which Japhy thinks is at odds with Buddhism. In Berkeley, Ray decides to keep drinking in Alvah Goldbrook’s cottage, while Japhy goes to the lecture. But when Japhy returns, he reveals that everyone there was getting drunk too. He and Ray never argue again.
Ray and Japhy’s argument again suggests that, even though Ray never admits it in the book, his drinking is actually a serious problem. However, just like in the rest of the book, it’s unclear how, exactly, sensory pleasures like drinking relate to the spiritual purity and concentration required for meditation. While Japhy voices the view that they’re incompatible because Buddhism is about putting the spiritual first, he has also previously said that it’s possible to combine them, or even that religion must accept the value of sensory pleasures like drinking and sex. His experience at the lecture seems to support this second theory, but Ray’s refusal to attend the lecture makes it clear that his drinking probably is negatively affecting him. Still, Ray and Japhy’s friendship allows them to overcome this conflict.
Themes
