Howl By Allen Ginsberg Essay

I have chosen the following themes from the story "Sweat" by Zora Neale Hurston: Society and class, Men and Masculinity and Suffering and Struggle. The first theme I chose was Society and class because Hurston portrays most of the townspeople as lower class through their language, behavior, and occupations. For example, the men on Joe Clarke's porch are described as apathetic and idle, chewing cane without much purpose. His lack of employment and his dependence on Delia's laundry services suggest a lower socioeconomic status. Delia, as a working woman, represents the working class struggling to make ends meet, evident in her dedication to laundry work despite her husband's mistreatment.

The standards of obscenity and what is and is not protected by the First Amendment has evolved as the fields of literature and art have expanded. In 1956, the headlines were filled with mentions of Howl being fought about in court. Howl, a poem written by Ginsberg, is focused on the “outcast” groups of American society such as the mentally ill, members of the LGBT community, and drug users. Originally, he did not intend for the poem to get out to the public due to the references from his own life with past loves, friends, and experiences. But Ferlinghetti, overhearing the poem read for the first time publically, offered to publish the poem. Soon afterwards, the poem was taken to court. The personal bits and certain details of the poem got the poem sent to court where it was put through the newer standards and reading practices to determine obscenity. At the end of the trial, the judge determined that Howl was not be obscene and was protected by the First Amendment.

Ginsberg points to those “who lost their love boys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew…” (line 40) which is inspired from the idea of homosexuality. The tone of sadness is clear because Ginsberg is suffering from such isolation, which was a “punishment for his homosexuality” (Hadda 232). Due to the tone of the poem, the themes of suffering and isolation are a lot more relevant in the

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

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.

Allen Ginsberg sees the increase in U.S involvement in the Cold War and the rise of the Red Scare as flaws in the government. Although America is doing so many bad things, the country still has the potential for so much more. In these poems, Ginsberg is able capture the times in which he lived in. These poems are also able to show how he was a pioneer of the Beat generation and would precede the coming backlash of the 1960s.

Ginsberg starts his poem with “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked” (Ginsberg 1). Ginsberg witnessed the people of his generation (mainly the other Beat poets) have their creativity destroyed by society. He then proceeds to describe their adventures and struggles in the rest of the first section. Most of these actions were very crazy and inappropriate like when they “bit detectives in the neck” (Ginsberg 34) or “who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy” (Ginsberg 36). The language Ginsberg uses to describe what he and his friends did is very explicit which goes against what society believes is appropriate.

But as quoted in both the poem and the movie Howl, I do think, “it’s a bunch of sensitive bullshit.” What I enjoy about Howl is that it starts out as a night out and later becomes a personal dialogue on people around him and the government’s effects on them. It to me is more of a narrative of hanging with his friends getting wasted and experiencing the night. It’s like the stories that you are never supposed to of to anyone other than those who were there, yet Ginsberg spills all the beans so to speak. Ginsberg also is very open with his sexuality and who he is as a person

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.

He implied in several different ways how the different lives of people were destroyed, “yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars” (Ginsberg, 63). Ginsberg mentions war in this part of the poem, in which he did not support. Ginsberg was anti-war, which in a way, made him a peacemaker, although he enjoyed breaking the rules. He found himself in trouble several times before, which made him a big of a rebel, because he did not care about the law, in fact, he implied that he despised the

It is evident from the very beginning that Ginsberg is disillusioned with American society, and he is ready to turn his back on what he feels has been oppressing him. "America I've given you all and now I'm

One of the main themes in part one is madness. The first line of the poem blatantly states, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.” He is referring ‘the best minds’ to his friends; his fellow beat poets ‘destroyed by madness.’ Part one does not only refer to his friends, but also applies to many other people such as drug users, drop outs, and homeless bums (“Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry”).

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 Beats were the radical outcasts of the 1950s, creating obscene, anti-war and thought provoking poetry. Not only did they not fit in with the norms of the time, they actively fought against them. The Beats were new and fascinating, though not to be openly awarded, they were to be condemned for their non-conformity. Even though they were portrayed as deviants, the interest and controversy surrounding them helped to boost their message and gain them fame and adoration. I did not have much of an opinion on the subculture of the Beats before this class, the only poem from this subculture that I had been exposed to beforehand was Howl by Ginsberg. Now I can fully appreciate Ginsberg’s work, by understanding the constraints of the time period, and the fight for the freedom of speech I have a high level of respect for the Beats.

Ginsberg describes Beatniks who ate, wept, coughed, plunged, cut, balled, hiccupped, howled, broke, burned, cowered, and sank, yacketyyakking, screaming, vomiting, whispering. These endless verbs range from ecstatic to violent and give the poem an almost frantic tone that reflects the lives of the oppressed. Ginsberg even titles his poem “howl,” a cry of emotion and sorrow. To howl is to wail in self-pity, to be helpless and alone. Hearing a howl is both frightening and piercingly sad. A howl is a perfect representation of the collective cry of the Beats; a people trapped like helpless animals with nothing to do but howl in despair.