Research Paper on:
Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums and East Meets West

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
to global travel and exploration and enterprise this was the case. But, today we live in a world that continually gets smaller and smaller. It seems that every event effects  the entire world to some degree, and religious powers and events are clearly no exception, as we have noted recently with global tensions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Literature  often has a way of describing such realities to us. Literature, even though it is fictional, often reflects the realities in any given society, clarifying how things change, and the  condition they are in. While written several decades ago, Jack Kerouacs "Dharma Bums" is a very good example of how East has met West in terms of personal and spiritually  sacred journeys. In the following paper we examine Kerouacs book as it involves themes of East and West, the possible distortion of those essential themes, whether the themes of East  and West are reinforced or challenged, and whether or not the ultimate vision is only a hybrid of the original faith. Themes Combined There can be little doubt  that Kerouacs book is one which combines East and West. It is the tale of several men, each on their own spiritual journey, who are separately involved in different spiritual  religious beliefs. We have these men living in the United States. They are products of a Christian country, and a Christian society. Yet, they are all individually struggling to find  themselves in their own definition of spirituality. Two of the men, Ryder and Smith, are actively engaging in their own forms of Buddhism. The other, Goldbook, is merely enjoying freedom  as it relates to drugs, women, good food, and the other niceties of a material, and perhaps non-spiritual life. In this simple perspective we can see that Goldbook is