Importance of Mountains in Kerouacs Dharma Bums and Barthelmes The Gl

importance of Mountains in Kerouacs Dharma Bums and Barthelmes The crank Mountain Mountains are significant in the penning of Jack Kerouac and Donald Barthelme as symbolic representations of achievement and the isolation of an individual from the mickle of the working class in industrialized capitalist American society. The mountains, represent by Kerouac and Barthelme, rise above the American landscape as shocking entities whose peaks are touched by few enduring and brave souls. The mountains of Kerouacs The Dharma Bums interpret personal freedom and accomplishment through achieving a connection with genius distant from the constraints of existentism and a polluted industrialized American society. Barthelmes Glass Mountain, however, envisions a mountain removed from nature as a advanced(a) skyscraper office building, an edifice that embodies the degradation of an emerging American society in the 1960s that is in search of the American Dream through material or monetary gains. The Glass Mountain remarks on the movement of Americans extraneous from nature, religion, and humanity as they look to false golden idols (the golden castling at the choke of the mountain) for inspiration to be successful, while Kerouacs The Dharma Bums emphasizes a restitution to nature and devout religiousness to inspire virtues of charity, kindness, humility, zeal, tranquility, wisdom, and ecstasy (p. 5). The top of the mountain, for twain authors, represents a fearful ascent from the masses of the working class flock in polluted cities in order to achieve a heightened recount of knowledge and success, but both explorers fall short of true fulfillment because they are never far removed from human flaws of greed, excess, and materia... ...est of the world from the top is better than actually doing it. The mountains also represent the struggle of the lower classes in American society to achieve wealth for the sake of happiness and fulfillmen t. What Americans quest wealth do not realize is that the top is a solitary place, devoid of the longing for material possession that keeps them going in life. The hot flash of climbing the mountain, or the corporate ladder, is always more rewarding than looking for down from the top to see the ugliness of the city below and regretting that they essential return to this ugliness of competition and greed in order to begin their own pitiful human existence. Bibliography Barthelme, Donald. The Glass Mountain. The raw(a) American Poetry., Allen, Donald, ed. Berkeley, Ca. U. Calif. Press, 1999. Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. New York Penguin., 1976.