America By Ginsberg Analysis

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“America when will you be angelic?”, Allen Ginsberg says in his poem America, which is one of his most controversial pieces. Ginsberg is mocking all of the things he’s seen wrong in America. He is asking the sinister being of America to become an angelic place. The opposite happens to Dean Moriarty in On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Dean gradually becomes a sinister being representing the devil, after once being viewed as iconic and angelic. He becomes a burden that Sal has to bring along. Misconception of time leads to the constant need to be moving. Dean never breaks away from the journey to evaluate his decisions he just keeps moving. Sal after suffering an illness that he won’t speak of. This illness that he suffered makes him want to travel west because of the ideology of what is the “west”. He starts traveling and never stops with Dean who makes sure that Sal never stops going. In as early as the first part of the novel, Sal and Dean both are struggling with different personal issues. Sal discusses that he had “just gotten over a serious illness” and that him and his wife had split up. Dean had also just got out of reform school. These issues are what motivates them to head west and never look about and never stop and think about the consequences. As the boys head west their …show more content…

While Dean and Sal get back on the road Sal tells Dean about a dream he had of a Shrouded Traveler, Dean identifies the traveler as Death which we later find out is Dean. For dean, time is the “it” that he talks so much about. He needs time to not have to stop and think about his life. He is attracted to younger girls because they are the youth that he doesn’t have anymore. Dean is searching for “IT”. Deans obsession to get “It” which is time drives him to madness when he has the realization that he can’t obtain it. “IT” is what drives Dean from an angel to the sinister being we see at the end of the

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