Who Is Allen Ginsberg's Howl?

Ginsberg addressed the inner workings of his complicated mind through his poetry, but he also inspired his readers to do so as well. Ginsberg was notorious for representing a variety of controversial issues, but he was also a part of the drug scene as a means of expanding personal exploration towards questioning the human condition. In his travels alongside his partner, Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg was inspired by a variety of psychedelic drugs and the peaceful acceptance of Eastern religions to develop a “global consciousness” that challenged his native society (Schumacher). In the same way rock music of the counterculture combined different types of music, Ginsberg's poetry uniquely combined styles of poetry, religious influences, and drug-induced creative thought processes to question his reality living in a Christian-dominated society. One passage of “Howl” in particular reads, “I’m with

The “mainstream” culture of America, at one point or another in history, created an idealized vision of the US. This consisted of the nuclear family, a general homogeneity of race and belief, and a set of guidelines by which American lived. Those who rejected the mainstream, who engaged in the counterculture, were called “hippies” at best, “Commies” at worst. When Manjoo references the

The social imbalance in the nation stirred emotions in most American citizens during the mid 1960’s to the mid 1970’s and caused politicians to scramble to make a way to find peace. People nationwide had strong feelings about social injustices and the events that were occurring in daily life, like the Vietnam War, civil rights causes, political scandals, and an upcoming election. The war and the civil rights opinions people held close to heart, defined personalities and separated families by differences that could not be met with compromising. The youth of the era were outspoken and willing to protest and march, causing problems in numerous college campuses nationwide. Members of the community up for the draft, fought the system by any

Following World War I, many Americans became hyperpatriotic and lived their lives much like previous generations. However, younger generations, especially the very one that fought in World War I, began to express themselves in new ways, and placed value in material wealth, and with their life choices constantly challenged by traditionalists, they believed that freedom was achieved through individual action. The new society was a consumer society, with very little regulation on businesses and where the individual American worker had very little power. modern culture was intertwined with a new modern business culture, one where society got modern things, by working hard as an individual, but overproduction and under consumption forced the

Around this time young people began to break away from their parents. Prior to this each generation had grown up treating their parents with the utmost respect and modelling their behaviour and views on their parents. This change was made easier by the freedom brought about by access to a car, which lead to increased independence. After the war there was huge economic growth in America, this coupled with mass production of automobiles made transport relatively cheap most families were able to afford a car. The children of these families were often allowed to take out the family car, granting them more freedom to go out with friends and more privacy for couples. This new show of independence was also evident in the young people's reaction to social issues that were taking place. Many of the young war veterans returning from the Second World War and the Korean War found it very hard to fit back into society. Many of these veterans got heavily into both drug taking and social protest. However it wasn’t only the youth returning from war who were dissatisfied with the governments reaction to a number of issues that young people felt very passionate about, namely civil rights and the onset of the Vietnam War. Inspired by the successes of some of the more prominent black leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, idealists were encouraged to believe that a

In the 1960s, youthful Americans attempted at new ways of life and foundations. They dissented the realism, consumerism, and craziness for achievement and goals that drove American culture. They encouraged individuals to investigate their own government and military tactics. They supported new ideas of encompassing sex and marriage. What's more, they contended that all ways to more profound satisfaction, even those

"The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is an eternity! Everyman's an angel! The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!...Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace & junk & drums!"

With reference to Ginsberg's emulation of Walt Whitman's content, the Norton Anthology, Postmodern American Poetry, states that, "Ginsberg proposed a return to the immediacy, egalitarianism and visionary ambitions of Blake and Whitman." (130). His poem "America" caters toward themes of democracy, something Whitman's poetry also does. Yet unlike Whitman, Ginsberg takes a more questioning stance on America and does not use his poem to praise the nation.

The public conformed towards the American Dream. Everyone wanted a home in Levittown, a car, a television set and a functional nuclear family. To be different from the norm put Americans in danger of being blacklisted as Communists. Low-interest mortgage insurance provided by the FHA made it possible for returning GI?s to start their own families. Cars also came at incredibly affordable prices as well. Suburbia became the center of social conformity and became the ideal for American culture.

The Beat Generation is a literary movement during the 1950s that consisted of male authors including the widely known Allen Ginsberg, who explored American culture in their poems. The Beat Generation could be described as misogynistic and patriarchal due to their exclusion of women and concerns confined to only male outcasts. In Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 “Howl”, he brings his audience’s attention to male outcasts in society. In her 2015 “Howl”, a critical response to Ginsberg’s “Howl”, Amy Newman explores the oppression outcasted women endure in a male-dominated culture through the allusions of an admired female poet, Ginsberg’s original stanza form, and utilizing diction to convey a woman's perspective antithetically to Allen Ginsberg's original.

What Allen Ginsberg did in 1955 was unthinkable. In the midst of McCarthyism and severe anticommunist sentiment, he wrote a poem in which he admitted having belonged to the Communist party. Yet, even more surprising was that he didn't stop there. In his poem "America," Allen Ginsberg challenges the beliefs and values that the United States has always cherished, leaving no stone unturned, and no feather unruffled. Always the cynic and revolutionary, Ginsberg slaughters the sacred cows.

The 1920s witnessed the betrayal of these ideals underlying the American Dream. The Jazz age generation ignored Franklin’s concern for moral betterment and public service, while embracing his emphasis on material advancement. This period also witnessed the degradation of Jefferson’s ideal of equality in its renewal of racism and anti-immigration laws. With the American Economy, capitalism created a sharp division of society into lower class and a leisure class, controlling the economy and practicing conspicuous consumption.

The elements of the Beat Generation’s poetry are drugs, sexuality, religion centering on the Eastern World, rejection of materialism and freedom of expression. The members of this movement were known as non-conformists and were spontaneously creative in their writings. Thomas Merrill states that the influence of drugs in the movement was:

In the poem Howl, Allen Ginsberg challenges the modernity of American culture, which enforces the “best minds” (1) to give up their freedom to conform to the desired sense of normality. Ginsberg states “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” (9). His expression of Moloch The angry fix is what all of these “best minds” look for after being stripped of their freedom to conform to the new American culture after World War II.

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