Letters About Literature (Final)

Dear Mr. Jack Kerouac

Your adventure, your philosophy, your way of life in your novel The Dharma Bums has eternally changed me. Thoughts of a future in my hometown, attending the University of Virginia, beginning a family and growing grey in the affluence of Charlottesville have abruptly shed like the shell of a cicada. Now dreams of years of world travel with just a backpack and a soul along for the ride fill my every thought. An education spent immersing myself in the things I truly care about lies ahead. Hopes of raising a family brought up in one big puddle of love without the cloud of an angst filled society raining on top of it. For what is a life not spent in union with the animals, with the world, with the void?

You told me life is a spontaneous creation. A thing so complex, it is meant not to have a path. You illustrated that the twists and turns add the flare everyone secretly longs for. Lives planned from birth, whether it is a baby boy whose future is premeditated to attend an ivy league, inherit the family business, marry rich and age on their parents trust fund or, the life of a poor baby girl in a third world country working her life away on the family farm, marrying without a choice, growing old having never left her village are now the antithesis of my dreams. These lives fill me full of true remorse. I want to pull them through the bleak trapdoor they do not realize lays only inches from their grip. Your book, your life showed me a way out. The Dharma Bums is a portal that can lead these ensnared souls to eternal personal freedom, to enlightenment.

Jack, you have taught me enlightenment is not money. It is not power. It is not even love, as I might have thought. Enlightenment is being one with oneself. Some might say that’s pure selfishness. I say it’s pure genius. Why live if you’re not at one with oneself? Why try to please others, when you yourself are not even fulfilled? Many philosophies state that material things are not essential for happiness. I doubted it. But you proved it. You climbed Matterhorn, with a little food and a little friendship. And you’ve never been happier than at the top of the peak- wind ripping through your heart like a roaring train slowly setting you on the tracks to true happiness.

Jack’s recipe for enlightenment I called it: oneself, a little food, a little friendship, a little spontaneity. I tried it. I climbed the peaks of the Peruvian Andes with a little food and a little friendship. I’ve never been happier. I’ve never been more at one with myself. I’ve never been more in the void. You were right, Jack. You bum, you were right all along.

Peace,
Rachel Woolworth