Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums p223-end

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 229

“’And this is Japhy’s lake, and these are Japhy’s mountains,’ I thought, and whished Jahpy were there to see me doing everything he wanted me to do.”

It feels like Ray only went into the mountains because he thought Japhy wanted him too. It is interesting how he longs for Japhy’s approval. Instead of being wowed by his surroundings or thinking of how this was his summer home and his mountain, Ray thinks of it as Japhy’s and wonders what Japhy would think of him there.

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 238

“The radio didn’t bother me much; there were no fires close enough for me to report ahead of anybody else and I didn’t participate in lookout chants. They dropped a could of radio batteries by parachute but my own batteries were still in good shape.”

It is interesting that Ray does not participate in the radio chats. They are his only connection to the outside world, yet he chooses to ignore them. He separates himself showing that the tranquil solitude is nicer for him than human contact.

Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums p.199-223

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 203

“East meets West finally, and it’ll be guys like us that can start the thing. Think of the millions of guys all over the world with rucksacks on their backs tramping around the back country and hitchhiking and bring the word down to everybody.”

This is an interesting quote because Japhy almost comes across like you would expect “mainstreamers” to. He sounds as if he thinks his way of life is superior and anyone who does not convert to his ways is a fool. This is contradictory to most dharma bum ways.

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 223

“The snow-covered mountains themselves had disappeared, receded from my view, I couldn’t se them any more but now I was beginning to feel them more.”

I liked this quote not for the insight it gives into Dharma Bums, but for the imager. Anyone who has stood at the foot of a huge mountain knows the feeling this quote portrays. The mountains are a vastness that you have no hope of conquering. You cannot and will not beat a mountain, and nothing shows that as well as the feeling of standing at the base with them looming over you.

Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums p.171-199

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 176

“Bud Diefendorf who worked as the janitor in the Buddhist Association to earn his rent and attend classes free… I liked Budd, hew was intelligent, and I liked the fact that he had stared out as a physicist at the University of Chicago then gone from that to philosophy and finally not the philosophy’s dreadful murderer, Buddha.”

It is interesting that Bud chose the path he did. He represents a very pure example of the Dharma Bum idle. He was a scientist but decided to work as a janitor. He studied philosophy which attempts to define the meaning of life and now follows a philosophy that states there is no meaning.

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 192

“Oh my God, sociability is just a big smile and a big smiles is nothing but teeth, I wish I could joust stay here and rest and be kind.”

Ray is saying that human interaction is false. He goes to a party and socializes- it is nothing. Even if he has fun- it is nothing. Even so, he is expected to be a Japhy’s party, but he feels that it is a gratuitous

Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums p.150-171

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 156

“I realized I had indeed learned from Japhy how to cast off the evils of the world and the city and find my true pure soul.”

Ray shows how he has changed from the beginning of the book. The Dharma Bum way does not cause dramatic changes. It is only in instances like this that a shift in character and ways in evident. Ray has developed a very Zen way of casting off the negative when at the start of the book he did not like Zen and clung to experiences.


Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 170

“Well I ain’t a happy little sage no mo’ and I’m tired.”

This is a rather dramatic change for the last time Ray was with Jahpy. It makes the reader wander what has occurred to cause Japhy to tire of what he values most. It is possible that this dramatic change is caused by the lack of dramatic change in his life. Going back to the previous quotation, the Dharma Bum way does not cause striking transformations. It does cause subtle changes, almost unnoticeable to the individual. Perhaps Jahpy sees a change in Ray but cannot see it in himself.

Dharma Bums Paper Topic

Topic - Is Japhy worthy of his Japhy mystic?

CCC Notes

Topic - Modern day Train Hopping and Hoboing
Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police

http://www.thespoon.com/trainhop/

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/03.26.03/trainhopping-0313.html

http://www.spikesys.com/Trains/hoboing.html

http://slingshot.tao.ca/displaybi.php?0079011

http://www.northbankfred.com/colin1.html

Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums p.120-140

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 122

“Everything is possible. I am God, I am Buddha, I am imperfect Ray Smith, all at the same time, I am empty space, I am all things. I have all the time in the world from life to life to do what is to do, to do what is done, to do the timeless doing, infinitely perfect within, why cry, why worry, perfect like mind essence and the minds of banana peels”

Yet again the paradox of the Dharma Bums. He is God, Buddha, and imperfect. Ray is nothing and everything. The ideas of the dharma bums continue to contradict themselves. Yet, the contradiction only seems to reaffirm their belief in their values.


Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 132

“People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums.”

This is one of the few times in the reading when it actually comes across that it is okay to live the “mainstream” way. Most of the time the dharma bums place themselves above majority culture, yet in returning home to his average family, Ray admits that it is the heart that is important not the furnishings.

Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums p. 94-120

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 96

“The world is nothing but the mind and what is the mind? The mind is nothing but the world, goddamnit. ”

The paradox of the Dharma Bums. They continually struggle with this concept of nothingness in the world. They partially want to say that the world does not exist and doesn’t matter, but at the same time they must acknowledge that life and everything in it is real.

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 120

“Everything was far away from that easy purity of being with Japhy Ryder in that high rock camp under peaceful singeing stars.”

Ray has an idealistic idea of what traveling the country will be. Even during these first few nights he is face with the realization that it is not perfect. His rucksack revolution is not going the way he envisioned it, but he remains committed to his beliefs.

Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums p. 72-94

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 90

“I was angry too because Japhy an Morley were afraid to stop ands rest, they said it was dangerous at this point to stop… ‘No, we’ve got to get down to that car tonight’”

On the way back down the mountain everyone was tired and irritable. It was interesting because they were heading back into society, and it seemed like whether they knew it or not that put them in a bad mindset. Even with their own reluctance to continue they seemed afraid to stay away any longer.

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 92

“Japhy thought the place I chose looked too bourgeois and insisted on going to a more workingman-looking restaurant across the highway.”

For all his talk of nothingness and simplicity, Japhy is still afraid to be judged by society. He is put on a pedestal for most of the book, yet when it comes down to it, Japhy is not immune to the pressures to conform to society. He only removes himself from situations where that pressure strongly exist.

Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums p.47-72

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 59

“Walking in this country you could understand the perfect gems of haikus the Oriental poets had written, never getting drunk in the mountains or anything but just going along as fresh as children writing down what they saw without literary devices or fanciness of expression.”

This quote is interesting because it deals with many of the same ideas we discuss in class. Ray finds that by separating himself from society and going back to nature, even if only for a day, frees him from many of the pressures of life. For a character who is always looking for a drink to improve a situation, admitting that it is unnecessary to get drunk is huge.

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 68

“Ray when you are up here you are not in the Berkeley tea room. This is the beginning and the end of the world right here.”

Nature and mountaintops are simple and pure. They offer an idea of vastness, permanency, and an unquestionable freedom. They are the opposite of the towns and cities that Ray comes from. The beginning and end of the world. Everything starts and ends like the mountaintop - simple pure and free – everything in between is only what we make it, and in the end means nothing.

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums p.24-49

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 31

“You know when I was a little kid in Oregon I didn’t feel that I was an American at all, with all that suburban ideal and sex repression and general dreary newspaper gray censorship of all our real human values… and my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything especially freedom. ”

In this quote, Japhy/Snyder says everything we have said about suburbia. An outsider free of the “ideal” he sees the flaws the repression, the conformity, and the very fakeness of it all. He sees all of this so-called perfection or American Ideal for the huge void it is. He practically calls the American dream a cookie-cutter of nothingness.

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 39

“Colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and televisions sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time…”

Once again the ideas come back to suburbia perfections and outside reality. Kerouac is saying that college means nothing. It is simply another uniform aspect for uniform individualizes. He is saying it teaches nothing but how to be the same. You go for no reason except you are supposed to. It is expected. While to Kerouac, time is much better spent and more is learned through his own counterculture lifestyle.

Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums p. 1-24

Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 5

“‘I was very devout in those days and was practicing my religious devotions almost to perfection. Since then I’ve become al little hypocritical about my lip-service and a little tired and cynical. Because now I am grown so old and neutral…. But then I really believed in the reality of charity and kindness and humility and zeal and neutral tranquility and wisdom and ecstasy. ”

I think the comment reflects the innocence of youth and the cynicism of age.
At this point in his life Jack or “Ray” was his own living ideal. He traveled the country free of the worldly ties that he saw as a hindrance to wider society. He lived as spiritually and whim indicated free of any controlling outside force. As he got older he began to realize that he could not live this ideal. There would always be the imperfect world no matter how perfect he tried to be.


Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
Page: 19

“I simply opened his little door and looked in and saw him at the end of the little shack, sitting cross-legged on a Paisley pillow on the straw mat, with his spectacles on, making him look old and scholarly and wise, with book on lap and little tin teapot and porcelain cup steaming at his side. He looked up very peacefully, saw who it was, said, “Ray, come in,” and bent his eyes again to the script.”

The idle contemplative practitioner most mediators seek to become, it is easy to see why Japhy captures Ray’s interest. Interested in both meditation and Buddhism as a whole Ray would be drawn to those who could help him better understand both. Japhy has the added draws of being poet, intellectual, interesting, counter-culture, and outdoorsy all of which Ray identifies with. For the two of them to form a bond of friendship is both expected and natural.

Extra Credit

I agree with the writer that money is both the cause of our problems and our way of dealing with that guilt ridden inner voice. Through societies dependence on the concept wealth, we have forced ourselves into a boundless impossibility. We will not, cannot give up what has become the foundation of our existence – Money. Yet, we will continue to damage our environments, both social and natural, and ourselves until we at least partial make this unthinkable sacrifice. There is no way out. We will not give up the obsessive consumption that drives us, and we cannot “buy off” the environmental devastation it causes.
I believe the writer purposefully ended the statement with a positive spin to leave the reader both scared and inspired. A combination that forces the reader to realize they need to change while reassuring them that it is not to late and they can make a difference.

Raymond Carver - Are These Actual Miles?

Raymond Carver Are These Actual Miles?
Page: 586

“‘I had to go without when I was a kid,’ she says. ‘these kids are not going tot do without,’ … She joins all the book clubs. … They enroll in the record clubs for something to play on the new stereo. They sign up for it all. … They buy what they want. If they can’t pay, they charge. They sign up.”

Because of hardship as a child, Toni feels she always needs more to make up for what she missed. This leads her to leave beyond her means. Continually consuming martial goods to reaffirm her status in the world and prove to herself that she is better than her parents were.

Raymond Carver Are These Actual Miles?
Page: 588

“‘He said personally he’d rather be classified a robber or a rapist than a bankrupt. He’s nice enough, thought.’”

Criminals are naturally social outcast, yet the car dealer would pick that over being a bankrupt. This shows that he believes money is more important than morality, or that being outcast for criminal behavior is less painful than being outcast for something as shameful as financial failure. Criminals are insane, desperate, or the product of a bad environment therefore exceptions are made for them. To be bankrupt however, is one’s own fault and something to me laughed at.