Howl The Loud Mournful Cry Of The Beat Generation Poem Analysis

Allen Ginsberg’s revolutionary poem, Howl, is a powerful portrayal of life degraded. It represents the harsh life of the beat generation and chronicles the struggles of the repressed. Howl is a poem of destruction. Destruction of mind, body, and soul through the oppression of the individual. Using powerful diction, Allen Ginsberg describes this abolition of life and its implications through our human understanding of abstractions like Time, Eternity, and self. The poem’s jumbled phrasing and drastic emotion seems to correspond with the minds of the people it describes. Ginsberg uses surprisingly precise and purposeful writing to weave the complex

Ginsberg’s use of anaphora forces us to question the historical origins of both social afflictions and collective resistance in Howl, this blurring of the poet’s central objects of identification implies that his lamentation for the madness of his own generation is also a lamentation for the blighted hopes and wasted intellects of their precursors (384).

He uses words like “madness” , “hysterical”, and “hallucinating” to reinforce the theme. Ginsberg has personally experienced insanity in his life, his mom had struggled with it his whole life, and had been institutionalized several times. Ginsberg himself had pleaded insanity after he was convicted for theft and had spent time in a mental asylum. During his time in the mental in the mental asylum he met Carl Solomon, whom this poem is dedicated to. Carl Solomon was also a poet and he was struggling from severe Schizophrenia. Ginsberg is surrounded with insanity, so much so that he starts to see it everywhere in the world around him, and he reflects it in his works. In the poem Ginsberg describes the best minds of his generation as being “ mad” , he goes on to write about how they are struggling with drugs and with the inability to conform to society's norms.

It was a 1951 TIME cover story, which dubbed the Beats a ‘Silent Generation, ’ that led to Allen Ginsberg’s retort in his poem ‘America,’ in which he vocalises a frustration at this loss of self- importance. The fifties Beat Generation, notably through Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl as will here be discussed, fought to revitalise individuality and revolutionise their censored society which seemed to produce everything for the masses at the expense of the individual’s creative and intellectual potential. Indeed, as John Clellon Holmes once noted: “TIME magazine called them the Silent Generation, but this may have been because TIME was not

The poem begins with Ginsberg stating that he “saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the Negro street at dawn looking for an angry fix, angel headed hipster burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night” (Ginsberg Line 1.) These “best minds” have been ostracized by society for their opposition to conform to

Similar to Marx, Ginsberg is against the idea of a small fraction of the people having significant control and power. Even though the poem is harsh on America, the goal of the author is not to shun or shame the country but try to better it. He is an extremely critical patriot trying to correct America’s flaws.

Ginsberg reflects on the satire of people worshipping American culture when it is actually the cause of their trouble. Which glorifies a civilization restricting you to normality, and destroying the best minds. These parts take the reader behind Ginsberg’s belief of the “best minds” American culture changes across the fundamental desires to destroy them.

Century apart, Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman share similar cultural, political and moral values, which they express in their literary work. Whitman’s writing is considered controversial for the eighteen hundreds. He sets the stage for generations to come breaking way from the strict Victorian poetic tradition by writing in free verse. Ginsberg follows his footsteps when composing his poem “Howl” by writing in long lines almost resembling prose and subdividing the poem into several parts. Likewise, he uses numerous repetitions to achieve rhythmicity of his verse. Ginsberg’s poem is heavily influenced by Whitman’s philosophy. The works “Song of myself” and “Howl” are similar in ideas, structure and underling themes. The two authors protest against old traditions imposed on the individual by corrupt society, stand against conformity and put emphasis on the need for change. They identify with their generation and dwell on themes such as sexuality, religion and the state of American society.

The first theme I want to analyze and discuss is the depiction of madness. The overall idea of madness in this poem is not the usual idea that we have in our heads about it. What most people in Ginsberg’s time period of society think of as a “normal” person, he considers insane. And then vice versa, people who would see another as mentally ill, Ginsberg would call a “misunderstood genius.” Most of the first section of this poem is Ginsberg describing how he “saw

He writes “ I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix” ( lines 1-2). Frank Casale discusses these lines in his article “Literary Contexts in Poetry: Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl.’” He writes “The poem’s opening line has become one of the most famous in American poetry. It serves as an opening into the experience of madness, drugs, prophecy, and a new vision that compose the field of the first part of the poem” (Casale 1). This line introduces the theme of the poem and introduces Ginsberg’s view on insanity and the Beat lifestyle. He supports those “who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, / [...] who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation” (60, 62). Casale continues by saying “In ‘Howl’ the Beats are repeatedly referred to as ‘angels,’ to connect those in search of the new consciousness or new vision [...] with the prophetic tradition. The quest for ‘kicks’ was not just an epicurean activity, but a serious search for freedom and new meaning in an America growing more conformist and authoritarian” (Casale 2). As a member of the Beat Generation, Ginsberg understands the Beat lifestyle and the way society views them, and he provides this generation with a

This poem is sometimes referred to as a violent “howl” of human anguish. It attacks the forces of conformity and mechanization that Ginsberg believed destroyed the best minds of his generation. This poem has no real structure or rational connection of ideas, and the rules of grammar are abandoned in order to pack imagery into one line. The poem points the way toward a new and better existence, chronicling the pilgrimage of the “mad generation” toward a reality that is timeless and placeless, holy and eternal.

“The weight of the world/is love./under the burden of solitude,/under the burden of dissatisfaction,/the weight,/the weight we carry/is love” (Ginsberg pg.50) . A simple, yet powerful quote from Allen Ginsberg, about how one can feel so lonely, even though he is full of love. Allen Ginsberg became well known in the 20th century for his unique yet powerful poems, “Ginsberg's raw power, spiritual depth, and technical innovation were driving forces in the shift that saw American poetry in the 1950s move away from a New Critical emphasis on formal, metrical, witty, ironic, and allusive verse toward verse that was at once more personal and more political” (Iadonisi p.1). Among his amazing works is a poem entitled “Howl.” With 112 lines, thought provoking themes, obscene words, and heavy drug influences, Howl is a poem about life through the eyes of Allen Ginsberg and his best friends also known as the beat poets. In “Howl” Ginsberg portrays a world of freedom , in a society of madness, to encourage others to be themselves, and not to

Therefore, in the very beginning, Ginsberg presents to the reader the subject and tone of the poem in the context of this question. Ginsberg’s questions make the audience realize the seriousness of the issues that this poem discusess, such as America, politics, war, humanity, and ethics.

Poet Allen Ginsberg composed "Howl" in 1955 and it was published by City Lights Books of San Francisco, CA the following year. He composed the poem in the middle of the 1950s, one of the greatest decades in history for mainstream America. It had been a decade since the American and Allied victory in the second world war. Numerous American men returned home to a country in much better shape than expected, with many women having entered the workforce to keep the economy and industry alive in their absence. The spoils of war were great and America saw a great era of prosperity and domestic, suburban bliss. More interstate highways were constructed. Many more cars were produced and bought. It was a classic era for mainstream American culture in the 1950s. Yet in the haze of the suburbs, expansion of television, growth of Hollywood, and cars, present here were the seeds of rebellion and counterculture that was more indicative of the following decade, 1960s. One such seed is the poem

There are many similarities between Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Ginsberg’s “Howl”. Whitman’s influence can be noticed in Ginsberg’s work which range from a similar style of format, structure, a concern with the general population of America, and the impact that these two great writers had on the rest of the literary world. Another significant influence that Whitman has for Ginsberg is the fact that Whitman had been considered an outcast from the literary world of his era. Whitman appeared as a plainly dressed working man rather than a fancy high societal poet. His long winded style, free verse, and sexual exposure made Whitman stand out from the rest of the other poets. Ginsberg was also not accepted among the poets of his generation. His literary works were banned from the public’s eye. Another similarity was between the two was their subject matter. In the introduction of leaves of grass, Malcolm Cowley said, “Its subject is a state of illumination induced by two (or three) separate moments of ecstasy”.