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 June 18, 1956, Ray says goodbye to Christine and starts hitchhiking north. A teacher brings him to Cloverdale, where he buys food, and then a farmer and a gregarious trucker get him to Crescent City. A gold miner and avid fisherman brings him to a nondescript mountain town where he naps in the woods, and then a used-car salesman and morose young logger get him to Canyonville, Oregon. In Canyonville, an amicable glove distributer picks Ray up and takes him to Eugene, where he sleeps by the side of the road. In the morning, he gazes in wonder at the beautiful Cascade Range, bathes in a stream, and says a short prayer with Japhy’s prayer beads.
As Ray hitchhikes north from San Francisco, he meets a vibrant array of working-class Americans. Their various occupations and personalities are a reminder of the diverse lifestyles that people live and the worldviews that they follow (even if all more or less participate in the mainstream culture that Kerouac rejects). However, Ray is clearly much less excited to meet these people than to reach the mountains, which shows that he continues to prize nature and solitude over civilization and companionship. Praying with Japhy’s beads, meanwhile, is a kind of symbolic gesture that honors his friend, making it clear that Ray learned his core values from Japhy.
Themes
A drunk housepainter brings Ray to Portland, where he catches a bus into Washington, then a ride with some other wild hitchhikers, and finally a ferry to Seattle. Sipping from a bottle of vodka that he finds hidden on the boat, Ray realizes that the Northwest is even more beautiful and expansive than he imagined—and Seattle proves to be fascinating, just like Japhy promised. Ray sleeps in a cheap hotel on Skid Row; in the morning, he has coffee and buys cheap secondhand winter clothes before hitchhiking his way toward the stunning Cascades. A racecar driver and a lumberman bring him into the wilderness, and then various farmers and miners bring him across the Skagit River and up into mountains on a road flanked by steep cliffs.
Through these final steps in Ray’s journey to the Cascades, the reader can get a new perspective on his life: it’s possible to see him how any other city resident would, as a homeless man staying on Skid Row and drinking in public. But common assumptions about such people don’t apply to Ray: he’s not homeless because of character flaws or economic circumstances, but rather because he sees it as a more interesting and fulfilling way to live. In fact, there couldn’t be a greater contrast between most people’s expectations for him and the reality of why he’s homeless. By seeing Ray in this new context, perhaps readers can reevaluate their assumptions about homeless people more broadly.
Themes
