The Dharma Bums Themes

In the semi-autobiographical novel The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac recounts his travels around North America in 1955–1956, focusing particularly on his friendship with the eccentric Buddhist environmentalist Gary Snyder. At his publisher’s request, Kerouac changed everyone’s names in the book, so he calls Snyder Japhy Ryder and he refers to himself as Ray Smith. Even though Ray spends much of the book hitchhiking around and getting drunk, he is really on a…

Jack Kerouac is often remembered less for his actual work than for the bohemian counterculture he came to represent. Despite its focus on Buddhism, The Dharma Bums is also full of the sex, drunken poetry readings, and spontaneous cross-country journeys that are commonly associated with Kerouac’s name and the Beat Generation movement to which he belonged. Indeed, Kerouac’s self-indulgence, wanderings, and commitment to Buddhism shared a common root. Namely, they’re based on his critique of…

When Ray Smith and his buddies are not hitchhiking, drinking, or spending time in the woods, they’re usually hanging out in their wooden shacks in Berkeley, reading and writing. In fact, meditation and literature are practically the only things they take seriously, and their greatest aspiration is to write poetry that captures the beauty of the world as they see it. In The Dharma Bums, Ray (who’s a stand-in for author Jack Kerouac) turns…

In addition to searching for truths about the universe through meditation, Ray Smith and his friends also dream of changing the world. They believe that their values could form the basis of a religious community, and Japhy Ryder even talks about starting a countercultural “rucksack revolution” to transform society as a whole. Nevertheless, when they talk about this free and inclusive society, Ray, Japhy, and their friends ironically imagine that everyone in it is a…