For Ray Smith, alcohol represents the emptiness and vice of human civilization, which he contrasts with the apparent purity and virtue of the life he creates when he goes off to live alone in the wilderness. Although Ray drinks frequently and compulsively throughout the book, his times of greatest enlightenment are generally his soberest. For instance, when Ray goes to hike Mount Matterhorn with Japhy and Henry, he initially worries that he won’t have access to alcohol—but then, after taking in the fresh mountain air and meditating on the natural world that surrounds him, Ray realizes that he no longer feels any compulsion to drink. His indifference to alcohol suggests that nature has a purifying effect on him.
While alcohol doesn’t always detract from Ray’s search for enlightenment, it’s only necessary when he’s surrounded by other people (rather than alone in nature). Namely, when Ray parties with his closest friends—Japhy, Alvah Goldbrook, and Warren Coughlin—they get drunk, write poetry, and talk about Buddhism together. Alcohol helps them heighten their senses and unleash their creativity so that they can better understand the universe. Similarly, Ray sometimes gets drunk at parties so that he can go meditate in a corner—when he’s surrounded by people, he needs to heighten his senses through alcohol in order to focus on the truths of nature and the universe. But when he’s out in the wilderness, he can do this sober. These examples suggest that alcohol is Ray’s response to the evil or impurity of human civilization. That said, it’s also a vice in itself—arguably, Ray’s compulsive drinking is his fatal flaw as a character, as it signifies that he’s never fully able to abandon human vices and reach the spiritual enlightenment he seeks.
Alcohol Quotes in The Dharma Bums
“Yessir, that's what, a series of monasteries for fellows to go and monastate and meditate in, we can have groups of shacks up in the Sierras or the High Cascades or even Ray says down in Mexico and have big wild gangs of pure holy men getting together to drink and talk and pray, think of the waves of salvation can flow out of nights like that, and finally have women, too, wives, small huts with religious families, like the old days of the Puritans. Who's to say the cops of America and the Republicans and Democrats are gonna tell everybody what to do?”
“It goes on and on, the disciples and the Masters go through the same thing, first they have to find and tame the ox of their mind essence, and then abandon that, then finally they attain to nothing, as represented by this empty panel, then having attained nothing they attain everything which is springtime blossoms in the trees so they end up coming down to the city to get drunk with the butchers like Li Po.” That was a very wise cartoon, it reminded me of my own experience, trying to tame my mind in the woods, then realizing it was all empty and awake and I didn't have to do anything, and now I was getting drunk with the butcher Japhy. We played records and lounged around smoking then went out and cut more wood.
Alcohol Symbol Timeline in The Dharma Bums
