Kerouac and Barthelmes Rebellion Against Corporate America Essay

tinkers dam Kerouac and Donald Barthelmes Rebellion Against corporeal America Oh America, home of the red, white, blue, and green. Green as our greenest grass. Green as our founder George on a one-dollar bill. You too can work your government agency up our market-economy toilet to your own little green house. Climb the corporate potbelly to provide for your wife in her little green dress. With the green downstairs your feet, reach for the gold in the sky. Oh America, this corporation is rich. As m all Americans eagerly began and continued their climb toward the financial stability the Sixties promised, a counterculture of writers and thinkers emerged want to climb their own mountains, to tell their own story of the climb the way they understand it. For Jack Kerouac, the story was The Dharma Bums, where a man discovers himself in the mountains minimalist, Buddha-like grace. Donald Barthelme borrows Americas market-economy mountain of materialism and attempts to reclaim it i n his prose poem, The Glass Mountain. Through their respective mountain narratives, Kerouac and Barthelme fight a personal fight against the raging currents of corporate America. Jack Kerouacs mountain in The Dharma Bums comes to represent what Kerouac, or rather the main use Ray Smith, conceives as the ideal standard of living. During Rays climb of Matterhorn with Japhy Ryder, Ray go throughs at Japhy with a particularly illuminating realization, What does he care if he hasnt got any money he doesnt need money, all he needs is his back pack with those little plastic bags of dried food and a good bracing of shoes and off he goes to enjoy the privileges of a millionaire in milieu like this. (Kerouac 77) Ray then resolves to beg... ...nt stories, Jack Kerouac and Donald Barthelme both participate in a personal rebellion against corporate America through their writing. Today, it is tricky to determine what the influence of their rebellion was on corporate America. We can be certain, however, that their resistance of corporate America brought them to a greater understanding of themselves and their surroundings. non only do Kerouac and Barthelme provide an illuminating glimpse at the displacement of corporate America in the twelve years between the dates the literature were published, but they also allow us a unique look at Americas mountains through their eyes. Works Cited Barthelme, Donald. The Glass Mountain. Taking It to the Streets. Ed. Alexander Bloom. Wini Breines. Oxford Oxford University Press, 1995. Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. late York Penguin Putnam Inc., 1976.