Howl By Allen Ginsberg Critical Analysis

By looking through a critical lens at T Stearns Eliot’s poetry in light of his 20th century, modernist context, much is revealed about his personal and the rapidly evolving societal beliefs of that era. Through his repeating motif of time and fragmentation throughout his poems, Eliot reveals the prevalent feelings of isolation while in society along with the need to hide one’s feelings and emotions in this degrading society. His exploration of the use of ambiguity and stream of consciousness by Eliot, which is a characteristic of modernist artists, allows his work to resound over decades while being interpreted and differently understood by every audience that encounters them.

Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.

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

Allen Ginsberg's Howl portrays many different metaphors, images, and analogy's to explain his perception of the 1950s. Howl is divided into three segments all having a different tone, style, and significance. The first segment introduces his belief on his generation, the second explains why his generation remained dreadful and the third is a series of personal metaphors with an assumed friend of his. The three segments can easily remind one of the transcendentalism movement, which is based on individualism and nonconformity.

Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” is a thought-provoking piece used to epitomize and give a voice the Beat Movement of the mid-20th century as they sought to reject nearly every aspect of society. Within his writing, he is quite literally “howling” his frustration regarding the conformism plaguing the population and seeks to abolish that by showing and protesting the havoc it has wreaked on even the best, most brilliant minds of his time. In what became an early forerunner to more modern calls for non-conformist action, Ginsberg employs vivid imagery, anaphora, and allusion to convey his message in the mind’s eye of his readers. A key literary device used by Ginsberg is imagery, which he utilizes to trigger the reader’s senses and foster a more holistic understanding of his writing by helping them to develop their

Where you were sick of the Tiffany-twisted minds, Mercedes bends, and the pretty pretty faces.

Rant Within the poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, the author delivers a brilliant example of remarkable word usage, and emotion. The poem illustrates how Ginsberg’s journey of exploration, hardship, and pain affected him for the rest of his life. At the time of its publishing, some of the language he used in the work was considered obscene and as a result, was banned in the U.S. His descriptions of places and happenings are both vague and intricate at the same time, compelling one’s imagination to participate in an attempt to relate to the words in some minor way. The language is harsh, but guides the readers to his locations and through his experiences. In the 1950s people dealt with poverty, war, civil rights, and drugs. Ginsberg’s poem is a

The form of Ginsberg’s poem challenges the American culture by resistance from “best minds”. Howl is separated to three sections that include long lines, which look like paragraphs. Resisting

The poem Howl written by Allen Ginsberg contains opinions of a speaker, based on witnessed occurrences and observations during a progressive time in a society. It explains of how the “best minds of a generation”(Ginsberg 1), refused to surrender their creative freethinking mindsets for means of conformity. The Moloch character in the poem serves as a symbol to convey internalized feelings of outrage and displease the speaker felt with the government and the domino effect of changes it brought fourth, upon observing the destruction of a generation. Moloch is made out to be a negative unwanted and unwelcomed entity, used to describe the control and rulings of a government. The part of the passage that states, “Robot apartments!

Ginsberg’s work often represents a struggle for spiritual survival in a dehumanized, repressive society. This can be seen in his writing of “Howl”:

In Amy Newman’s “Howl”, she alludes to Sylvia Plath, an American female poet, who is acknowledged for her hardships as a outcasted female in the poetry world due to her oppressive marriage. Newman illustrates Plath as, “[a] star-spangled lost in her housebound Eden curse with orchards and a million gossipy daffodils, writing and nursing and not on the lists...” (Newman). In Allen Ginsberg’s original “Howl” he adverts to male poets he admires of his time, opposingly Newman emulates Ginsberg’s technique and alludes to a feminist iconic poet Sylvia Plath. Newman implements a biblical allusion referencing The Garden of Eden to depict Plath as a successful female poet who was metaphorically locked in her household; where a woman's place

I chose “Howl” to examine because it describes in great detail the anger, frustration, and self-destruction of Allen’s generation. Allen felt that his generation conformed to standards and to the American culture. Thus, he uses the poem, “Howl”, to express his anger and refusal to conform to America’s standards. The title of the poem suggests themes in the poem like madness and anger toward conformity. Moreover, the title suggests the theme of expression in the form of angry words and lines.

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

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.