Jack Kerouac Essays

Howl by Allen Ginsberg: A Reflection on Institutions In the midst of radical changes in America during the 1950s as a result of the Cold War, the Beat Generation came into existence. America in the 1950s was an age of conformity, something the Beats were against. Individuality was thrown out the window. The middle class emerged. In the suburbs, every house looked the same and everyone wanted to buy what their neighbor had and keep up with societal norms. Everyone acted the same way and shared

The Dharma Bums Aesthetic Response   After the opening chapter of the novel in which the narrator writes, "Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running- that's the way to live" (7), I knew that the book was not only going to be interesting, but also great. I was not displeased after finishing it either. The Dharma Bums struck me as being one of the most fantastic books that I have ever read; one that contains an amazingly

Kerouac has also published other novels that are prominently about drugs and poverty. Buddhism has also influenced the Beat writing in so many ways. The concept of having an open-minded view and perspective, questioning the restriction of the government,

There is a stereotype that the best minds of a generation are the heroes of their generations, making new discoveries that can alter the course of history. While this holds true most of the time, Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem “Howl” offers a different perspective. In “Howl,” Ginsberg chronicles the chaotic lives of the “best minds of [his] generation,” using graphic language that eventually landed the publishers of the poem in court for a lawsuit, which was documented in the 2010 film Howl. Howl suggests

In A Mexico Fellaheen from Lonesome Traveler, Jack Kerouac describes crossing the border between America and Mexico: "It's a great feeling of entering the Pure Land, especially because it's so close to dry faced Arizona and Texas and all over the Southwest B but you can find it, this feeling, this fellaheen feeling about life, that timeless gayety of people not involved in great cultural and civilization issues" (22). Mexico is at once "close to" America and yet distinct from it, a "Pure Land" removed

The Beat Generation began in the 1950’s with a group of writers who took part of this movement were Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Bob Dylan, and William S. Burroughs. They were a group of rebellious free thinkers as well as famous authors during their time. As time progressed into the 1960’s, these men were known as hippies. The Beat Generation was a literary movement. Their radical ways of thinking helped shape what allowed literary figures to publish. The poem “America” written by

Creativity is flowing and the Beat Poets of the 1950s are unknowingly establishing a counterculture movement, one that challenges the social norms and politics of their time and even transcends generations to remain relevant today. Poets like Jack Kerouac, William Seward Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg were heavily influenced by jazz, adopting their “seedy dress, manners, and ‘hip’ vocabulary” (“Beat Movement”) that changed their lifestyle and helped write their poetry. Specifically

Importance of Mountains in Kerouac's Dharma Bums and Barthelme's The Glass Mountain     Mountains are significant in the writing of Jack Kerouac and Donald Barthelme as symbolic representations of achievement and the isolation of an individual from the masses of the working class in industrialized capitalist American society. The mountains, depicted by Kerouac and Barthelme, rise above the American landscape as majestic entities whose peaks are touched by few enduring and brave souls. The mountains

     Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was an important figure in the Beat Generation Movement that took place right before the revolutionary American 60¡¦s. Other major beat writers (also called ¡§beatnicks¡¨) were: Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. The beat poetry was meant to be oral and very effective in readings. It developed out of poetry readings in underground clubs.(a beautiful image of these secret clubs can be found in the movie called ¡§Dead Poet¡¦s Society¡¨

During the 1950s, many different literary movements came to the spotlight. Two such movements were Confessionalism and Beat poetry. There are many commonalities between these movements, and often, authors and works from the Beat movement incorporate various Confessionalist characteristics. Allen Ginsberg, one such author, combined both Confessionalism and Beat poetry in a variety of his works, including Howl and Kaddish. The Confessionalist aspects of Allen Ginsberg and his works, such as Howl and