Transformation of the Growing-Up Novel as Impacted by Zen Buddhism Ideas in Kerouac’s Novels “On the Road” and “Dharma Bums”

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the analysis of two key novels created by the USA writer J. Kerouac, “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums”. The authors aim at identifying and describing how the specific generic features of the growing-up novel, as preconditioned by the resonation with Zen Buddhist ideas, function in the aforesaid writings, as well as showing that the novel “On the Road” demonstrates the “cross-current” in Kerouac’s world view which had prepared his infatuation with Zen Buddhism before he familiarized himself with it. Analyzing the texts of the aforesaid manuscripts through the prism of Zen Buddhist principles, the researchers outline the following ideas being typical of Kerouac as a representative of the Beat generation: the disengagement from attachments; the spontaneity; the position of a human as an observer who has renounced the individuality; the Path as an independent value; the “Zen poverty”; the duality of madness and wisdom, and the ecstatic perception of the being moment as close to the term of “Satori” in the Zen. These listed elements of the Beat-and-Zen culture are curiously integrated into the genre paradigm of the growing-up novel, specifically, the variation thereof such as the “becoming” novel, which is transformed by acquiring the innovative features: Kerouac’s novels are written from the first-person point of view and lack the assessment of the hero’s behaviour as typical for the classical forms of the growing-up novel narrating in third person; the characters are not obliged by external circumstances to survive the challenges, consciously choosing the homeless life whose events mould them up; there is the re-evaluation of the role of the mentor whose authority is not associated with the age or status thereof; the heroes teach each other interchangeably, while the age or the social position become insignificant.