Comparing Society in The Dharma Bums and The New American Poetry

Throughout recent history, the fifties proved to be the most interesting to me because not only was it a time of great economic expansion; but it was also known as a period where current citizens and leaders of the United States frowned upon. The “Golden Age” proved to be one of the most outbreaking movements of the industrial age. This period in American history gave citizens of the United States access to a better standard of living, transformed American agriculture, and brought the rise of the suburban nation. Remarkably, the employment rate for women had skyrocketed during the year of 1955 proving that

theme of a corrupt, brainwashed society that reflects the community during the era of the 1930s.

In the 1920’s this gap became more of a chasm as the nation’s youth entered the Jazz age, adopting the new styles of music and dress that accompanied it. Women wore shorter skirts, smoked, drove cars, and sported new haircuts, and men went to new jazz clubs that played edgy music that was good for dancing. Overall the new lifestyle was a complete departure from the Victorian mode of living that preceded it, and it was rejected by the older generation as energetically it was embraced by youth. In the 1950’s a similar change took place as parents allowed their children to have more freedom, and religion was not as strictly enforced. The widespread availability of automobiles allowed teenagers to travel around more than they ever had, and the automobile provided teenagers a new place to be free from the observation of their parents, which enabled many new activities, like petting. Just as the youth of the 1920’s had Jazz music, teenagers in the 50’s began to bother their parents by listening to Rock ‘n’ Roll music, whose stars included the scandalous Elvis Presley and even African-American stars like Little Richard, showing that the music allowed youth to transcend race. Just as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literature alarmed more conservative Americans with its description of the popular culture of the time, literature during the 50’s was similarly troubling, dealing with themes of

The rebellion against automation and middle-class prosperity of the sixties is portrayed in Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. Ray and the other dharma bums lived on little money and enjoyed nature. Ray traveled cross-country hitchhiking and jumping on trains from California to North Carolina and back more than once on only a few dollars and while at home in North Carolina for Christmas he sat in the woods with his dog much of the time and preferred to sleep in a sleeping bag outside on the porch rather than inside his mother's home. This love of nature and desire to live a very meager lifestyle in opposition to the working class prosperity seems to be more in opposition to the changing culture, which was becoming more automated and industry driven, than it was trying to illicit change. Regarding automation and middle-class prosperity, it seems that Kerouac and others feared the loss of nature to industry as well as one's time to be able to enjoy nature.

With the overwhelming amount of Levittown houses, the obsession to obtain the perfect American “ideal family” as seen on TV and the unspoken agreement to fear any and all foreign ideas and values, the 1950s were revealed to be a decade of prosperity, conformity and consensus. Just ten years later the atmosphere in America was shockingly different; the 1960s were a decade of turbulence, protest and disillusionment due to the ongoing struggle for civil rights, arising feminism, and the Vietnam War.

The Sixties, by Terry H. Anderson, takes the reader on a journey through one of the most turbulent decades in American life. Beginning with the crew-cut conformity of 1950s Cold War culture and ending with the transition into the uneasy '70s, Anderson notes the rise of an idealistic generation of baby boomers, widespread social activism, and revolutionary counterculture. Anderson explores the rapidly shifting mood of the country with the optimism during the Kennedy years, the liberal advances of Johnson's "Great Society," and the growing conflict over Vietnam that nearly tore America apart. The book also navigates through different themes regarding the decade's different currents of social change; including the anti-war movement, the civil

The sixties seemed to challenge basic American assumptions; the value of hard work and of traditional family values. “Middle” America formed 55% of the population, earning between $5000 and $15000 p.a. They lived between the city slums and the affluent suburbs, and were usually up to their eyes in debt. They wanted the law to protect them and their property. They believed in good manners, in respect for authority and the flag. The changes of the sixties left many of them confused and angry. They were not sure who to blame for social unrest. They were the silent minority that Nixon appealed to in his election campaign, and they helped him to victory. They were the resentment and reaction byproduct of social unrest. They worked to ensure their property and found it unfair that the government gave money to the people that did not work as much as they did. They wanted law and order. They wanted a state that provided security, response to the insecurity they felt in face of the students movement and the liberal culture. They felt ignored by the democrat government because they did not benefit from the financial help, house and health security.

America’s Uncivil Wars is a book written about the sixties era that captures that provides understanding of how and why events occurred during this period, as well as their historical roots from the time since the Second World War. The author, Mark Hamilton Lytle, used a chronological approach to explain the era by dividing the sixties into three separate phases. The first is the era of consensus, which starts approximately around 1954 and includes the years up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. From there, Lytle talks about events in the second phase: the years from 1964 to 1968. These are the years after Kennedy’s death until the

Throughout the book Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac, the characters resist the urge to normalize their peculiar behavior. This particular idea of nonconformity is present throughout the entirety of the book. The ultimate source of uniformity, to which Japhy Ryder and Ray Smith are definitely opposed to, is the middle class. The majority of the American population, who are trapped in the "rat race" of money-making and social climbing, rely on these social norms to create class distinction. Kerouac delivers the overall theme that obedience of societal norms is aberrant.

For Americans, the 1960’s were a time of both unnerving turmoil and exciting change. Following on the heels of the 1950’s themes of tradition and conformity, the contrasting events and attitudes in the sixties constituted a perfect storm leading to a reconstruction of American social, cultural, and political ideals. Although each decade has experienced identifying features, events occurring during the sixties provided for a definitive coming of age era for the United States. While much of this revolution can be attributed to the events themselves, the medium used for disseminating these ideas bears some of the responsibility. Throughout the decade television replaced radio and newspaper as the primary source of news and entertainment.

The historic beat generation served as a bridge to the hippies in the early 1960’s. They were radical poets who opposed censorship. They were outspoken and placed a great deal of emphasis on drugs, alcohol, and sex. They were known for their eccentric writing styles. “Much of the poetry in the mid-‘50s was in a kind of neoformalist and academic mode that was very tame and highly intellectual and spoke to a small and elite audience” (Interview). However, the beat generation spoke to the rest of the population. They were elite, for they came from top notch universities, nonetheless, they wrote about the forbidden topics. No censorship, everything was placed out in the open for everyone to see. A prolific figurehead arose, Diane di Prima. She

The 1960s are frequently referred to as a period of social protest and dissent. Antiwar demonstrators, civil-rights activists, feminists, and members of various other social groups demanded what they considered to be justice and sought reparation for the wrongs they believed they had suffered. The decade marked a shift from a collective view on politics, to a much more individualistic viewpoint. The 1960s could easily be characterized as a period during which political, ideological, and social tensions among radicals, liberals, and conservatives in American society are seen to have rapidly unfolded. Due to this, the decade has had an overwhelming effect on the decades that have followed. The sixties have had the greatest impact on American society out of any decade in recent history. Whether for better or for worse, the decade has had a profound influence on politics, society, foreign policy, and culture.

The 1960's was a decade of tremendous social and political upheaval. In the United States, many movements occurred by groups of people seeking to make positive changes in society.

The local mass culture is difficult to evoke emotional resonance of the working class. The American mass culture in daily life of microscopic narrative let the postwar British working class have more cultural identity. American mass culture and its products were the earliest borrowed to convey intransigence young working-class oneself. This is not only the traditional British working class to be romantic, which is also made on the media temperate (Sabatini, 1994). The popular culture has grade of negation. It was romanticized British working class which has been the British industrial society problem of intellectuals germinal by a kind of ideal of homesickness and nostalgia for ideals (Zinkernagel, 1997). As Morris of 17 century British was full of homesickness, organic society was born of a working-class family culture scholars. Richard Hoggart in 1958 the way of literacy has the uses of literacy also with romantic memories of the 1930 s British north industrial area of everyday life. At that time of the working class and culture has its own community, they have stable work, warm family to have a healthy, organic country life. It is the low consumption culture organic culture to kill off the British working class. However, the next generation of the working class don't want to live in the old class system. The postwar

It is fairly apparent that a number of political overtones dominate Emile Zola's novel Germinal, which is the 13th book of nonfiction within the writer's Les Rougon-Macquart, a 20-volume series of novels. The author published this work of literature in 1885, less than 50 years after Marx and Engels unveiled the Communist Manifesto which was still plenty of time for a number of the ideologies propagated in this manuscript to take hold of popular culture and political theorists alike. In fact, one could successfully make a claim that the central theme of Germinal actually revolves around the conceptions of class antagonism that is an inherent part of an exploitative, bourgeois society such as that depicted in the French coal mining town in 1860, the setting for Germinal. A thorough analysis of this literary work illustrates that there are several instances of class antagonism, which are central to the plot of this book and provide its primary theme.