Supermarket In California By Allen Ginsberg: Poem Analysis

Analyzing literature is a multi-step process that requires much more consideration and dedication than a single read. Although many people believe they can find the meaning of literary writing by defining terms and combining them with his or her own interpretation, analysis goes much further. Understanding the true meaning of an author’s work requires you to research the author and his or her intentions, enhance your background knowledge of the subject of the work, and realize its historical significance. A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg is a remarkable poem that was written in the 1950s, with far more meaning than meets the eye. At first glance, it seems as though this poem is about a man strolling through the night who, in hunger,

He recognizes the prevalence of supermarkets in this time period by noting the “Whole families shopping at night” (Ginsberg) and expressing that the aisles are full of husbands, while the wives and babies are with the fruits (Ginsberg). He walks “in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans” (Ginsberg), criticizing the overconsumption of product and the excess garbage it leaves laying around. And while he denotes the frozen foods as delicacies, Ginsberg is in fact being sarcastic and expressing disgust for them (Ginsberg). Then Walt Whitman asks, “Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas?” (Ginsberg) and Ginsberg knows the store’s owner and employees would be unable to answer him, due to commoditization. So as it returns to Ginsberg’s perspective, he mirrors Whitman’s criticism by talking about “the lost America” (Ginsberg) and referencing the idiom “Keeping up with the Joneses” as he strolls “past blue automobiles in driveways” (Ginsberg). This references the growing importance of materialistic goods and the use of one’s neighbor as a benchmark for social caste and the accumulation of these