Allen Ginsberg Howl Analysis

1504 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Free of speech

A Howling Political Outburst
Imagine a world where it was acceptable to express all of your thoughts and feelings without worrying about what others thought of you. Sadly, that kind world is only real in our imagination. We live in a world where freedom of speech exists, yet we’re part of a society that prevents us from freely expressing ourselves. And I truly believe that is what makes people go insane because they have to keep the things they want to speak about inside their heads. Or of course, turn to writing a book or poem just like Allen Ginsberg. After reading “Howl,” I’ve come to a conclusion that Ginsberg was a mad man stuck in a cruel some world that prevented him from being him. “Howl” was a political outburst and protest in poetry …show more content…

He admits to using those drugs in Part I and greatly shows proof with the descriptive and creative language he uses. When you look at his word choice you get a sense of getting lost in a false reality, a reality he wished existed instead of the one he had to live through. Which would explain why as you read through Part I, you are now going on a road trip with Ginsberg and the Beats all over the United States. Witnessing and experiencing life under the influence and life not under the influence. For example line 59, “who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation” (Ginsberg, 17), illustrates life in the fast lane and using road trips as a way of escape from the reality they refuse to be a part of while of course high. Then we have line 60 where Ginsberg and the Beats “drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if [he] had a vision or [they] had a vision to find out Eternity” (Ginsberg, 17). Ginsberg and the Beats just drove across country three days straight in hopes that someone in the car would have some kind of spiritual vision about Eternity. A place where Ginsberg and the Beats can remain existence for an endless amount of time without the feeling of

Show More
Related

  • Alex Longnecker: Song Analysis

    531 Words  | 2 Pages

    There was a vocal recital on October 19th, 2017 at 7:30PM, held at the performance hall in Mountain view college. Alex Longnecker, a tenor vocalist and Imre Patkai, (pianist) played a series of homophonic textured songs, some being sung in German and others in English. The Three selected songs I will be writing about are, The Lincolnshire Poacher, The Plough Boy, and Im Wunderschonen Monat Mai. This performance played a total of 24 Pieces, composed by 4 composers, being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ernest Chausson, Benjamin Britten, and Robert Schumann.

    Read More

  • Comparing the Gettysburg Address and Ginsberg's America

    1530 Words  | 4 Pages

    The "Poet of the New Violence" On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg. Ed. Lewis Hyde. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. 29-31.

    Read More

  • Jimi Hendrix Are You Experience Meaning

    3021 Words  | 7 Pages

    Jimi was known to experiment with LSD and marijuana. Many of the song titles and lyrics could lead one to think the relations are about narcotics or barbiturates. “Are You Experienced?” was said to be an allusion to one’s experience with drugs and “Purple Haze” could clearly be an indication to smoking a “certain” substance. However, in many interviews, Jimi said that was not the case. Many lyrical interpretations vary by different people, depending on whom you ask.

    Read More

  • Zero and Asylum in the Snow by Lawrence Durrell

    2092 Words  | 5 Pages

    What is madness? Is madness a brain disorder or a chemical imbalance? On the other hand, is it an expressed behavior that is far different from what society would believe is "normal"? Lawrence Durrell addresses these questions when he explores society's response to madness in his short story pair "Zero and Asylum in the Snow," which resembles the nearly incoherent ramblings of a madman. In these stories, Durrell portrays how sane, or lucid, people cannot grasp and understand the concept of madness. This inability to understand madness leads society to fear behavior that is different from "normal," and subsequently, this fear dictates how they deal with it. These responses include putting a name to what they fear and locking it up in an effort to control it. Underlying all, however, Durrell repeatedly raises the question: who should define what is mad?

    Read More

  • Importance Of Rules And Controls In Ayn Rand's Anthem

    627 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel, Anthem by Ayn Rand, the city has very strict rules and controls over the people. Those rules were made to control the people from showing individuality. The characters in the novel are never allowed to express themselves because of those rules. The society is based around these rules and controls. The main character, Equality, does not obey those rules. He runs away from the city into the Uncharted Forest to get away from the strict rules and controls. He stands up for himself.

    Read More

  • A Collectivist Society In Ayn Rand's Anthem

    547 Words  | 2 Pages

    Our brothers are silent, for they dare not to speak the thought of their minds . For all must agree with all, and they cannot know if their thoughts are the thoughts of all, and so they fear to speak.” (Rand 47) This shows the fear that people in society have and even if they had the thoughts like equality did, of individuality and lust, they are too scared to express them.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Awake: The Cellar And Broken Silence

    231 Words  | 1 Pages

    Awake is an amazing book by Natasha Preston. This woman also wrote the books The Cellar and Broken Silence. She was born in England and has a husband and a baby boy in her life. Two of the main characters in this novel are Scarlett Garner and Noah York. The problem is that she lost her memory to a house fire when she was the young age of four. Little does she know her biological family is actually part of a cult called “Eternal Light”. The issue with this is that “Eternal light” believes that a savior could provide them with the privilege of being “immortal”. When Scarlett turns sixteen she gets into a tragic car accident with her adoptive family which gives her back some of her memories of when she was young. Noah on the other hand was sent

    Read More

  • Brave new world essay

    1119 Words  | 3 Pages

    Drugs are used to escape the real and move into the surreal world of one’s own imaginations, where the pain is gone and one believes one can be happy. People look on their life, their world, their own reality, and feel sickened by the uncaringly blunt vision. Those too weak to stand up to this hard life seek their escape. They believe this escape may be found in chemicals that can alter the mind, placing a delusional peace in the place of their own depression: “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly halucinant,” (52). They do this with alcohol, acid, crack, cocaine, heroine, opium, even marijuana for the commoner economy. These people would rather hide behind the haze than deal with real problems. “...A gramme is better than a damn.” (55).

    Read More

  • Ma Rainey's Prove It On Me Blues

    1761 Words  | 4 Pages

    Black art forms have historically always been an avenue for the voice; from spirituals to work songs to ballads, pieces of literature are one way that the black community has consistently been able to express their opinions and communicate to society at large. One was this has been achieved is through civil disobedience meeting civil manners. In this case, it would be just acknowledging an issue through art and literature. On the other hand, there is art with a direct purpose - literature meant to spur action; to convey anger and shock; or to prompt empathy, based on a discontent with the status quo. That is, protest literature. Through the marriage of the personal and political voices in black poetry and music, the genre functions as a form

    Read More

  • True Emotions In Carolyn Kizer's Bitch

    1016 Words  | 3 Pages

    Individuals may or may not go through a situation where they would enjoy nothing more than to yell, scream, or even fight another person for something that he or she said or did. It is challenging to hold back such intense emotions, but it is the wise thing to do in order to avoid further conflict. In Carolyn Kizer’s “Bitch”, the speaker demonstrates holding back her emotions in front of her ex-lover. It was tough for her to do so because she wanted him to understand how she felt. Overall, Kizer establishes the importance of being the better person by holding back one’s feelings in order to avoid further consequences. She illustrates this through portraying the speaker’s true emotions, revealing information of her ex-lover, and showing how the speaker carries herself on the outside.

    Read More

  • Identity In Part One Of Howl By Ginsberg

    1479 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are no obscure intellectual rants about Moloch and what is going on in America which happened in parts I and II. Ginsberg in a way starts to mellow out and began to accept reality as it is. Furthermore, he realizes that he is not alone in coping with the everyday drudgery of life itself. He starts by earnestly telling his friend Carl Solomon that “I’m with you in Rockland…” (line 94). Ginsberg met Solomon in Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute, where Solomon “was treated there for depression with insulin shock” (Charters par. 7). There was a common ground between the two; both men were “great writers on the same dreadful typewriter” (line 99), as well as being among “twenty-five-thousand mad comrades all together [in an insane asylum] singing the final stanzas of the Internationale” (line 109). Ginsberg’s mother was admitted to many psychiatric wards and eventually passed away in one; Solomon becomes a comfort for Ginsberg as he saw “the shade of [his] mother” (line 96). The tight bond shared between the two allowed them to get through hell-on-earth experiences such as going through “fifty more shocks…” (line 106). Ginsberg and Solomon’s friendship gave both men internal peace to ward off the destruction of the outer

    Read More

  • An Analysis of Adam’s Song

    697 Words  | 2 Pages

    Bob McKenty suggests in the poem "Adam's Song" that life is not a stationary event, it is forever changing and that in order to handle those changes humor serves as a good buffer. The tone of "Adam's Song" changes distinctly at least three times. McKenty uses rhythm, rhyme, and meter to express the essence of change in the poem and in life.

    Read More

  • Madness In Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl'

    1101 Words  | 3 Pages

    The society around us changes constantly and if we don’t catch up, we can possibly find ourselves in a suffering of our own madness. Ginsberg lived in a society in which homosexuals were unacceptable in which had to be treated with shock therapy. We can easily see why one can be driven to madness because it is hard for one individual to change the minds of many. Over time though we can see the issue being resolved and the acceptance of gays is becoming popular. But that is just the thing though, why must we let society define who we are and how to live? As far as I’m concerned, we are all human, no different from one another. Ginsberg’s poem Howl is important to read because it gives us insight into the cruel side of society in which people are constantly living in. With that knowledge, we can learn be more fair and to treat other people like equals and not opposites. We can take the initiative as individuals to make equality known and freedom

    Read More

  • Analysis of Ginsberg's Howl

    2800 Words  | 6 Pages

    Though he refutes his own dominant message throughout the course of Howl, it is a resolution based on symbolism rather than a concrete solution steeped in reality. By focusing on the rapid introduction of unnamed individuals, he establishes the setup before the fall. Their chaotic and frantic lifestyles fly in the face of the popular opinion of the country, and so the energy they present exists almost solely to be destroyed. The omnipresent troubles in our country can only be solved through means of either absolute insanity or convincing ourselves through means of philosophy that there was never a problem to begin with. With the description of popular culture as one of the most oppressive figures in literary history, Ginsberg's optimism is perhaps reserved only for the counterculture that he sought to glorify. All the power and energy of life is still present in the form of the anonymous "who," and it's merely a battle to see whether or not the human spirit can manage to struggle through the trials of Moloch without ending up in a mental institution.

    Read More

  • Ginsberg's Howl: a Counterculture Manifesto

    4123 Words  | 9 Pages

    ...and terror- Allen Ginsberg tells the truth, as best he can, about himself, the world, and the cosmos. Ginsberg insists and aims for "candor, accurate candor, total candor" in his poetry. Howl is explosive- as befitting a poem for the atomic age- and yet it is also symmetrical. In Howl Ginsberg is at his most original. In Howl, he moved American poetry forward, forging a global tradition of poetry that includes Whitman, Eliot, Rimbaud, Williams, and a bit of Garcia Lorca and Mayakovsky, too. Eliot wrote, "Every supreme poet, classic or not, tends to exhaust the ground he cultivates." In Howl, Ginsberg exhausts the ground he cultivates through the manifestation of counterculture.

    Read More

More about Allen Ginsberg Howl Analysis

Open Document