The Dharma Bums Summary
Jack Kerouac

Everything you need to understand or teach The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.

The Dharma Bums Summary & Study Guide

30 The Dharma Bums Lessons
20 Activities
180 Multiple Choice Questions
60 Short Essay Questions
20 Essay Questions
Pre-Made Tests and Quizzes
...and more

The Dharma Bums Summary

Ray Smith, a mid-thirties East Coast beat writer gaining national attention, travels to Berkeley, California and lives with Alvah Goldbook, an East Coast beat poet at the beginning of his career. Ray meets the younger Japhy Ryder, a student of Zen Buddhism and outdoors enthusiast. Ray and Japhy forge a strong friendship based on mutual experiences and a shared love for Buddhist philosophy, poetry and the simple life.

The two men...

(read more from the Study Guide)

Study Pack

The The Dharma Bums Study Pack contains:

The Dharma Bums Study Guide

Plot Summary

Chapter Summaries

Free Quiz

Characters

Objects/Places

Themes

Style

Quotes

Topics for Discussion

Jack Kerouac Biographies (5)

Jack Kerouac

5,775 words, approx. 20 pages

Jack Kerouac died, as he had spent much of his adult life, writing. The morning of October 20, 1969, he was sitting in front of his television at his home in St. Petersburg, Florida, jotting down note... Read more

Jack Kerouac

3,449 words, approx. 12 pages

Jack Kerouac, regarded in modern American fiction as the authentic voice of the "beat generation," thought of himself as a storyteller in the innovative literary tradition of Proust and Joyce, creatin... Read more

Jack Kerouac

17,377 words, approx. 58 pages

Jack Kerouac, once called "our most misunderstood and underestimated writer," is gradually emerging from that limbo, though much about him remains obscure. The obscurity results from a misreading of h... Read more

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac

1,069 words, approx. 4 pages

Jean-Louis Lebris de (Jack) Kerouac (1922-1969), American writer, experimented with spontaneous autobiographical fiction chronicling his travels into the American West. He is known as the father of th... Read more

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac

3,796 words, approx. 13 pages

Biography EssayJack Kerouac, regarded in modern American fiction as the authentic voice of the "beat genera- don," thought of himself as a storyteller in the innovative literary tradition of Proust an... Read more

Download the Study Pack