Materialism in The Dharma Bums and Goodbye, Columbus :: Dharma Bums Essays

Materialism in The Dharma Bums and Goodbye, Columbus Several works we have read gum olibanum far have criticized the prosperity of American suburbia. Jack Kerouacs The Dharma Bums, Philip Roths Goodbye, Columbus, and an excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghettis poem A C hotshoty Island of the Mind all pass judgement on the denizens of the conservative and the materialism in which they surround themselves. However, each work does not make the same analysis, as the stories ar told from different view institutionalizes. The Dharma Bums and A Coney Island of the Mind are critiques of materialism by people who have rejected the middle-class ideals. In Goodbye, Columbus, however, Roth makes his point via Neil, a dweller of the lower class who wants to join the prosperous regularise of the Patimkin family. The difference is that Kerouac and Ferlinghetti mock the suburbanites, yet pay them little attention musical composition several characters in Goodbye, Columbus are disdainful o f the materialism exuded by the Patimkins while feeling excluded from their social class. In The Dharma Bums, Kerouac strengthens his argument for the Zen ideal of poverty and freedom by this criticism of the conformity practiced by the middle-class ...youll ingest if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on two sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention probably on one show nobody talking silence in the yards dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of wheels. Youll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way and the Zen Lunatics have long joined dust, laughter on their dust lips. (104) Kerouacs point is that freedom doesnt exist in a place where everyone is watching the same thing and thinking the same thing at the sa me time. Kerouac also reflects on the futile trap of materialism. Japhy discusses all that crap they didnt really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least fancy new cars, authentic hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.