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Chapter 17
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
Ray hitchhikes his way to the border town of Calexico, mainly with a Mexican man named Jaimy, who promises to take him across the border to Mexicali but then abruptly disappears. Ray wanders around and gawks at women, then decides to cross the border alone. A security guard tells him off for peeing in public, and then a Chinese beggar warns him against camping out in public, because someone could easily rob him. Ray eats dinner at a local restaurant and marvels at people hanging out and listening to music on the street, and then he buys snacks and heads back across to Calexico. The border guards search his whole rucksack for drugs but find nothing, so they let him cross.
Ray’s day on the border is full of random and unexpected adventures—his unconventional life on the road seems far more interesting than a conventional American life split between work and home. Still, when the border guards search Ray, this shows how others view him: they expect someone who looks like him and seems to be homeless to be involved in nefarious activities. Meanwhile, like Japhy, the Chinese beggar is a voice of wisdom and reason for Ray. It’s no coincidence that this man is Chinese, since Ray and Japhy strongly associate Asian cultures with Buddhist wisdom.
Themes
Ray heads to Calexico’s trainyard and asks around for the Zipper train, but he finds out that it doesn’t stop there. He decides to hitchhike again, and a truck driver named Beaudry picks him up. Beaudry wants to spend the evening in Mexicali, and Ray lies that he used to live there. They cross back over the border, get drunk in a bar, and visit a brothel. The next day, they make it all the way to Tucson, Arizona, where Beaudry says that he’s craving a steak. Ray cooks him one over a fire out in the desert, and Beaudry loves it. He realizes that Ray is much happier than he is, even though he makes good money and has a nice house and family back in Ohio. Out of gratitude, he offers to take Ray all the way to Ohio, even though the insurance company might catch him and get him fired.
Ray views his day with Beaudry as an opportunity to display his Dharma Bum lifestyle to someone who’s still living in the mainstream culture. After Ray makes the steak in the desert, Beaudry’s reaction validates his hopes: Beaudry agrees that the Dharma Bum lifestyle seems freer and more fulfilling than his own. But since he’s already built a stable life for himself, he can’t go back and start wandering like Ray. In fact, Ray and Japhy are able to choose their free-wheeling lifestyle only because they are young and have no dependents, debts, or commitments to their families. However, few people are able to take on the personal, professional, and financial risks that come with pursuing freedom through spiritual wandering.
Themes
Ray and Beaudry make it to Ohio in no time, barreling through New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. They listen to the radio the whole way, eat at various truck stops, and only stop once to sleep in a hotel. After getting off in freezing cold Springfield, Ohio, Ray gets a hotel room and buys a bus ticket for North Carolina. He changes his mind and decides to hitchhike, but the bus company doesn’t refund his ticket, so he hitchhikes one town over before catching the next bus to Raleigh.
Beaudry’s gratitude pays off, and the rest of Ray’s journey is smooth and uneventful. In fact, as a hobo and hitchhiker, Ray primarily lives off other people’s gratitude—but he also shares freely with others whenever he’s able, so it goes both ways. As a result, he doesn’t usually have to organize his life around getting money and paying for things he needs—instead, like a Buddhist monk, he lives on gratitude, mercy, and goodwill. Of course, occasionally he has to pay for a hotel room or a bus ticket, as in this passage; he’s not able to completely divorce himself from mainstream society.
Themes
From Raleigh, Ray takes a local bus to the turnoff for his mother’s house deep in the woods. He walks the last few miles in the snow. When he arrives, his mother is washing dishes, looking worried to death, because Ray is so late. Ray realizes that Japhy is hypocritical for hating modern technologies like “kitchen machinery,” since Buddhism is really about having compassion for everyone, regardless of how they choose to live. Excited to be home for Christmas and spend the next several months meditating there, Ray visits his dog and greets his mother, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew inside.
Surprisingly, when Ray reaches his mother’s house, he briefly steps out of his countercultural bohemian mode and becomes just another member of an ordinary American family. This shows that, even though he rejects mainstream American culture in general, he still understands some of the reasons that people become deeply attached to it. In fact, his empathy for his mother—who’s forced to wash dishes by hand—shows that he understands how conventional ideas of gender end up forcing women into subservient roles. (This is something Japhy never realizes, even when he envisions a new society.) In turn, Ray critiques Japhy for putting ideals above practicality: while it’s easy for him to reject “kitchen machinery” because he’s a single man living in the woods, a dishwasher would make a significant difference in many women’s lives. This reinforces Ray’s sense that for most people, who are already living modern lives, it’s simply impossible to give everything up and go frolic in the woods like Japhy. In other words, Ray and Japhy are privileged to be able to reject mainstream society wholesale; most people must simply decide what role they want to play in mainstream society.
Themes
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