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
On the evening of Japhy’s big party, Ray dreads socializing until someone brings him wine. Sean sets up a huge bonfire, and the guests divide into three groups, like during all the other parties. Inside, Ray dances and plays bongo drums with Sean, Bud, Alvah, and his friend George. In the yard, Rheinhold Cacoethes rants about the state of American poetry while Warren Coughlin tries to get in a word edgewise. Henry Morley briefly visits as well; he reads some magazines and comics and makes a strange comment about hotdogs and “stray Mexicans” to Ray and Japhy before disappearing. Others party on top of the hill, and even Japhy’s father visits. Just like Japhy, he’s athletic and jumpy, and he dances energetically with girls all night.
Sean’s party again brings together the Dharma Bums’ whole community of friends, family, and acquaintances—whether Buddhists, bums, or poets. However, Ray doesn’t find the convivial atmosphere all that interesting or fulfilling. For instance, he clearly doesn’t care about what Rheinhold Cacoethes has to say about poetry or what Henry Morley thinks of “stray Mexicans.” Rather, he presents these interactions as empty, pointless, and absurd because they’re based on meaningless intellectual games, as opposed to Ray’s serious reckoning with what it means to live a spiritually fulfilling life.
Themes
Japhy dances with Psyche, leaving Polly and Princess sad and confused. Japhy tells Ray he can “take whichever” of the girls he wants. Ray chats with Arthur Whane, the Buddhist Association’s sociable director, and dances with a woman before realizing her husband is nearby. Alvah and George decide to get naked, then Japhy follows. He frightens Psyche, Polly, and Princess whenever he sees them by roaring and jumping at them. Japhy’s father tells Ray that he has no issue with any of this. After years living in the Oregon wilderness, now he lives comfortably in the nearby town of Mill Valley; he’s separated from Japhy’s mother, who lives alone in the Northwest.
While Japhy is a generous and dedicated friend to Ray, he’s cruel and manipulative to his three girlfriends. Still, Ray admires Japhy’s luck with women, which again shows how their friend group is male-centered and unwelcoming and condescending to women. Of course, they aren’t alone in this: as Japhy’s father’s attitude suggests, in many ways they’re reflecting the generalized sexism of white American society in the 1950s. Even while they reject other aspects of mainstream culture that don’t serve their needs, they embrace gender hierarchies that put them on top, which shows that their Buddhist ideas of generosity and love for everyone are limited by their own biases.
Themes
Japhy and Psyche get into a fight, so Psyche decides to leave. Ray follows her to her car and tries to convince her to stay, but she ends up backing into a ditch and having to stay with Christine and Sean anyway. Everyone sets up to sleep on various parts of the property, and Ray is just getting ready to tuck into his sleeping bag on the grass when Alvah comes outside to chat and read poetry. Then, Bud decides to go see if there are any girls still around Christine’s house. In the morning twilight, Ray eats by the bonfire and yells out to everyone to get up. Then, remembers that human life is pointless because the truth of the universe is just “the sound of silence.” He returns up the hill, contemplating the strangeness of human existence.
Ray presents Psyche as irrational and jealous, while considering himself noble for standing up for Japhy. However, this situation would look completely different from Psyche’s perspective—and yet Ray doesn’t consider this, which again shows how he unknowingly reinforces gender hierarchies, even though he thinks of Buddhism as a liberating religion. Later, when Ray yells out to everyone, he initially seems annoyed by other people but then starts to feel a sense of sympathy for them because of their insignificance. This thought process allows him to reconcile his feeling of love and sympathy for others with his preference for being alone: it’s a way of reminding himself of life’s meaninglessness and most people’s lack of enlightenment.
Themes
