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
The next evening, Warren Coughlin, Alvah Goldbrook, and Ray visit Japhy with a gallon of wine. On their way to Japhy’s shack, Warren fondly remembers partying with Japhy in college, and Alvah marvels at Japhy’s eccentricity. When they go inside, Japhy leaps across the whole room and lands with a dagger held right up against Ray’s glass wine jug. Ray thinks that Japhy looks like a samurai, and he seems angry that the others are interrupting his evening (which he’d planned to spend reading) and trying to get him drunk. But Japhy immediately starts drinking with the others, and the four men catch up and argue about poetry. A few hours later, Ray, Warren, and Alvah dance and stumble up the street back toward Alvah’s cottage.
Ray and his group of friends all enjoy themselves because they share the same values and interests (Buddhism and poetry). However, the group clearly centers around Japhy, whom they view as a role model as well as a friend. Ray is surprised that Japhy willingly drinks alcohol with the others, since he usually drinks tea. Ray associates tea with purity and virtue and alcohol with immorality and vice. So, when Japhy starts drinking and the guys end up getting drunk while discussing Buddhism and poetry, this suggests that it’s actually possible to use alcohol in a spiritually fulfilling way, without it being a vice.
Themes
