Lawrence Ferlinghetti is often regarded as one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century, and his writing covers a wide range of social topics regarding the status of American culture during the 1950s and 60s. Many of Ferlinghetti’s works focus on his vision of America and how that vision had not come to fruition because of the less than ideal situations surrounding American culture at the time. Consequently, Ferlinghetti was also an avid member of the Beat generation and used his ability to write as a platform for spreading the message of the Beatniks. As we have discussed in class, the Beatniks refer to the generation of young people during the 1950s and 1960s that rode the wave of counterculture that was sweeping the …show more content…
In his poem, “Sometime During Eternity…”, he criticizes the way Americans view Jesus Christ and questions the dogma attached to traditional Christian beliefs. Ferlinghetti discusses how the American people like to treat Jesus as if he is some sort of high end celebrity, referring to him as “hip” and “cat” (15), names which are usually associated with jazz musicians. However, despite the adoration the American people use when talking about Jesus, Ferlinghetti states that we later “... Stretch him on the Tree to cool/ And everybody after that/ is always making models/ of this tree/ with Him hung up/ and always crooning His name” (15-16). This quote shows that the American people are often able to speak romantically of Jesus and adore Him with their words, but come up short with their actions, as they put Him on the Cross by denying their faith in Him. As we have discussed in class, this is a reference to the biblical figure, Peter, who denied Jesus three times just before the crucifixion of Jesus. Ferlinghetti is writing this piece to show that the American people have turned into Peter, as we want ourselves and others to believe that we are devout believers in Christ, but our faith crumbles and our knowledge of Christ crumbles at the slightest provocation. Also, as we have discussed in class, the poem is unorganized and does not seem to have a consistent pattern or verse, as well as many references to jazz. This is because the poem is meant to have a theme of
The Carleton University Art Gallery’s current exhibition We Are Continually Exposed to the Flashbulb of Death: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg (1953-1996), is a linear timeline of the lives, romances, and works of the American Beat generation. The exhibition, curated by Barbara Fischer and John Shoesmith, is a survey of Allen Ginsberg’s photographs, which capture the freedom, artistic creations, and the open sexuality of this group. The organization of the exhibit, along with the added captions below each photograph, create a narrative of a past generation, both capturing and reflecting on an era.
Qualities of the post-World War II Beat culture include obscene and defiant behaviors in addition to an environment paved with drugs and poverty. One of the stories that best portrays the central elements of the Beat culture is the story of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in On the Road by Jack Kerouac. In fact, Jack Kerouac is the writer who was the first to coin the term “Beat Generation.” In the story, Sal Paradise meets a highly experimental and charismatic man dubbed Dean Moriarty. The story follows them as they travel from corner to corner of the country searching for meaning, all while facing adversities such as confusion, depression, drugs, alcohol, and overall abandonment. Since these qualities are a
The rise of counterculture in the 1960s was caused in large part by the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, military conscription, and the teenagers of affluent middle-class parents. The teenagers of those families wanted more than anything else to experience life to its fullest, before it was too late. The irony was that “ behaviors by counterculture youth were and are an easy target for criticism, especially on the part of those eager to belittle the decade’s significance ( Morgan; 170). There were two waves of the counterculture (hippie) movement; the first dealt with the shock of JFK’s assassination, government aid to Vietnam, the student sit-ins and the militant stance of the Black Panthers. All of which caused a weariness to hippie-dome
During the 1920’s a new movement began to arise. This movement known as the Harlem Renaissance expressed the new African American culture. The new African American culture was expressed through the writing of books, poetry, essays, the playing of music, and through sculptures and paintings. Three poems and their poets express the new African American culture with ease. (Jordan 848-891) The poems also express the position of themselves and other African Americans during this time. “You and Your Whole Race”, “Yet Do I Marvel”, and “The Lynching” are the three poems whose themes are the same. The poets of these poems are, as in order, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude Mckay.
Langston Hughes and Bob Dylan are two poets from different eras in modern American poetry. Although Bob Dylan is more characterized as a songwriter, I see much of his work as poetry. In this essay, I will discuss Hughes’ poem “Harlem [1]” and Dylan’s “Times They Are A-Changin”’ as commentaries on are culture, but from different backgrounds.
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 beat generation was a movement that sought to oppose American society values, and any sort of control. They explored Eastern religions, was somewhat postmodernism, rejected the materialistic culture, spoke about drugs, our conscious mind, and fought for sexual liberation and exploration with their unapologetically offensive language. While reading the novel Jitterbug Perfume written by Tom Robbin, one can witness how the novel exhibits aspects of the beat literature, and thus concluding that the beat generation served as inspiration to Tom Robbin.
” Williams’ theory therefore suggests that the terms must necessarily co-exist in order to define each other. The “pervasiveness of consent ” therefore characterises the fifties, against which these Beat texts can be contrasted. Theodore Roszak’s 1969 article ‘The Making of a Counterculture,’ helps define beat ideology as “heightened self-expression and often a rejection of political and authoritative institutions… a negative spirit of the times coupled with a specific lifestyle .” Both On the Road and Howl and their author’s lifestyles of their writers reflect this criterion, in idiomatic and contextual terms, lending to the notion that they are, by the overall nature of their existence, countercultural texts. Roszak’s adolescent counterculture often seems the embodiment of Dean and Sal’s ‘beatitude’ in On the Road “when they pulse to music…value what is raunchy… flare against authority, seek new experience, ” but it is similarly descriptive of the naked, sometime vulgar language Ginsberg employs in Howl “who bit detectives in the neck… let themselves be fucked in the ass.” (13) The Beats admire the vibrancy naturally present among youth, and although this is a style for which their writing has been criticised, it is a move away from the traditionally
The turbulent societal changes of the mid-20th Century have been documented in countless forms of literature, film and art. On the Road by Jack Kerouac was written and published at the outset of the counter-culture movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This novel provides a first-hand account of the beginnings of the Beat movement and acts as a harbinger for the major societal changes that would occur in the United States throughout the next two decades. On the contrary, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a Hunter S. Thompson novel written in 1971 provides a commentary on American society at the end of the counter-culture movement. Thompson reflects on the whirlwind of political and social activism he experienced and how American society had
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.
To understand the sixties counterculture, we must understand the important role of Bob Dylan. His lyrics fueled the rebellious youth in America. Songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times are A-Changin” made him favorable to anti-war demonstrators and supporters of the Civil Rights movement. He was commonly hailed as the spokesman for his generation. Dylan used lyrics to allow the youth to find their own form of counter-culture. The youth generation began to see the effects racism, war, etc. effect the society in America. To combat this, the youth created their own form of counter-culture to promote a peaceful change within society. Some of their actions include forming anti-war protests that opposed America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and supporting African Americans/women get the rights they deserve through the Civil Rights Movement. Bob Dylan’s music appealed to the young generation because he openly expresses his disapproval of the establishment in order to influenced his audience to move in a direction for change. Counterculture youth rejected cultural norms of the previous generation and their values and lifestyles opposed the mainstream culture present in the 1950’s. The folk music revival of the early 1960s, as well as the counter-culture movement played an important role in advocating change. Bob Dylan wrote songs that influenced the Civil Rights Movement, New Left Movement, and Anti-War Movement.
The “beat movement” is a literary period born out of World War II. This movement in American Literature has become an important period in the history of literature and society in America. Characterized by personal alienation and contempt for convention, the movement celebrated stylistic freedom and spontaneity. The Beat writers created a new vision of modern life and altered the nature of awareness in America.
The beatniks had a different outlook on how to deal with problems and tragedy in society. Most of the ways this idea of “change”, came about was through articles, literature, films, and music. This made the message of the Beat Movement spread across quickly. Whether it was bad or good news, the beatniks were still getting publicity through the media. The media today still plays an important role when learning about the beatniks of the 1950’s.
Jack Kerouac was one of a group of young men who, immediately after the Second World War, protested against what they saw as the blandness, conformity and lack of cultural purpose of middle-class life in America. The priorities of people of their age, in the mainstream of society, were to get married, to move the suburbs, to have children and to accumulate wealth and possessions. Jack Kerouac and his friends consciously rejected this pursuit of stability and instead looked elsewhere for personal fulfillment. They were the Beats, the pioneers of a counterculture that came to be known as the Beat Generation. The Beats saw mainstream life as a prison. They wanted freedom, the freedom to pick up and go at a moments notice. This search for
Influences of the Beat Movement can be noted in the next phase of American History: Hippie counter-culture of the 1960s. The Beat Generation was an important political catalyst for those minorities that had no voice. The “beatniks” of the movement were seen as a threat by those Americans that lived in the typical suburbs of American who tried to raise their children in morally upright ways (Silesky, 81).