The Dharma Bums

“Then I suddenly had the most tremendous feeling of the pitifulness of human beings, whatever they were, their faces, pained mouths, personalities, attempts to be gay, little petulance, feeling of loss, their dull and empty witticism so soon forgotten…” (199)

This is at the final goodbye party for Japhy before he moves to Japan. Everyone is drunk and signing and falling everywhere and acting ridiculous. Ray himself is also drunk but in silence by the fire he realizes that everything people do these days is worthless. That the lives they live are kind of pointless and they all live by a certain feeling. But when your drunk those feelings are lost and forgotten quickly.

“Japhy was sad and disappointed. ‘How do you expect to become a good bhiukku or even a Bodhisattva Mahasattva always getting Drunk like that?’” (190)

Japhy wants to take Ray to a lecture but Ray would rather walk around San Francisco and get drunk. This seems kind of opposite from the beginning. Japhy was usually the one letting go and not caring, where as Ray sat back and care more about what he did and how he appeared. In this case Japhy is hoping Ray will go to the lecture to talk to other writers to help his writing but Ray would rather walk around drunk.