War, Minorities and Labor Unions The 1950’s beatniks gather around coffeeshops, writing and grumbling about the unfairness of the government and society’s closed mind. Today, youth gather around their laptops and type away, despairing over the unfairness of the government and society’s closed mind. Allen Ginsberg’s poetry embodies those angry youth. His unique choices in diction, symbolism and imagery artfully conveys his criticism against the wrongdoings of Uncle Sam and his subjects. Through his poem America, Ginsberg reaches out to all generations of people and exposes the ethical mistakes that both the government and society as a whole make, and these mistakes are classic in the sense that it is always a mistake that everyone keeps repeating. In Allen Ginsberg’s poem America, he sloughs off a lot of disappointment in the first two lines, saying “America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing/ America two dollars and twenty seven cents January 17, 1956” (lines 1-2). The words create this image of a tired man, broke, walking through the streets the day of January 17. The date is unusual in that it has absolutely no historical significance, a contrast with all the other things mentioned in the poem, save for the fact that January 17 is the date the poem was …show more content…
The crestfallen tone shows that, as a citizen, the government let people down. Ginsberg thinks that all the economic recovery America gained was through human suffering, since the Depression made a rebound after America started marketing weapons to Europe in World War Two. Uncle Sam has made war the national business. How could you be patriotic towards a country with “libraries full of tears” (12), a country whose history is full of
The world today can sometimes be a hard place to live, or at least live in comfort. Whether it be through the fault of bullies, or an even more wide spread problem such as racism, it is nearly impossible to live a day in the world today and feel like it was only full of happiness and good times. Due to this widespread problem of racism, often times we tend to see authors go with the grain and ignore it, continuously writing as if nothing bad happens in the world. Fortunately, Claudia Rankine, is not one of these authors. Rankine manages to paint a vivid picture of a life of hardships in her lyric Citizen: An American Lyric. In this lyric Claudia Rankine shows that she truly has a very interesting and not commonly used approach to some literary
Allen Ginsberg was a Jewish American poet, who was born in June 3 1929, he’s poetry vigorously opposed such topics as militarism, economic materialism and sexual- repression. Ginsberg is best known for his epic poem "Howl", in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States.
Could there be people who are consciously aware about how they live and the way society shapes them? The quote that W.I. Thomas, in other words, means that when people think something is true, there will be consequences from that belief. For example, when I was young, these girls for some reason did not like who I was and began to spread rumors about me. Therefore, people believed them. Although I told people personally that the rumors were false, they still did not believe me and that was the consequence. With this example, it portrays how each day, people behave and interact with the environment around
A few cases in which this poem is particularly relevant in today’s society, apart from just the general hipster culture, is the fact that in many ways we’re faced with similar issues of social oppression of certain sects of the population, homophobia, discord amongst different cultures and excessive consumerism – all these being matters than Ginsberg felt strongly about and sought to fight against.
The beatnik poetry of Andrei Voznesensky shows an evolving image of America from a Russian standpoint. In his poem “The Triangular Pear,” Voznesensky has no agenda to show the positive nature of Russia, or the negative effects of capitalism. Instead, his sole concern is to discover the core of America, to answer the age-old question, “What is America? Where can she be found?” To do this, he must search both extrinsically and intrinsically. Voznesensky shows this search throughout the poem by constantly scaling. His imagery goes up and down, as does his presentation of the piece. Furthermore, this poem is fast paced, which adds to the feeling of constant movement. “The Triangular Pear” is split into two parts, Prelude I and II. The first prelude talks about the speaker’s search for America, while the second prelude focuses on what he sees and finds in America. Clearly, Voznesensky sees America in a way Russian writers before him had not, and using his unique lens he adds to one’s understanding of America.
After a close analysis of “America” by Tony Hoagland, the poem warns and points out the problems with our consumerism. Hoagland uses metaphors and imagery to describe the actions of American, while throwing in counteracting themes. And uses thoughts and dreams to bring in metaphors that complex the poem.
Poems are forms of communication that give an applicable view of the past, present and future events. Reading the poem titled “America”, written by Richard Blanco brought me memories from my childhood in my parent’s house and also what is happening now in my house as a parent. The poem explains how one person doesn’t have all the knowledge about something. It also, describes the daily life struggles I experienced during my childhood, when my parent 's and I moved from our hometown to live in another town becuase of their work and it brings to light the conflict of cultures I and my children are going through since we moved to United State of America .
Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945. Oxford History of the United States: Oxford University Press. Davidson, J. W., Delay, B., et al. (2005). The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary'.
“On the pulse of morning” describes the challenges facing American people through personification. The tree, river and rock have become symbols for peace, security, wisdom, humanity and freedom available to all people of every background and circumstance. People have been using hurtful and damaging words and language for far too long, though they were created for greater realities. “Have lain too long face down in ignorance. Your mouths spilling words armed for slaughter.” (Angelou) Return to a wisdom before you believed people were motivated by self-interest. “Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow and when you yet knew you still knew nothing.” (Angelou)
Americans strive to obtain the American dream, but they fail to realize that it is our own dissatisfaction and anger that get in our way of keeping the American dream alive. John Steinbeck’s, “Paradox and Dream”, describes these paradoxes that linger in almost all Americans lives. Steinbeck shows how Americans believe in these things, but they contradict them by the actions they take or the words we say. He describes how Americans are dissatisfied, angry and intemperate. John Steinbeck portrayed a negative attitude towards Americans and their ideals by displaying how most are dissatisfied and angry, intemperate and opinionated, and believe in these certain things about ourselves that are not always true.
Ginzburg insists that time cannot heal the wounds of war and that her generation, tied to war by its suffering and by its destiny, uncompromisingly carries the truth. She effectively uses all her rhetorical tools: repetitive imagery, fatalistic tone, and purposeful lack of organization, to show how war makes people lose their world forever.
Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” criticizes America during the midst of the twentieth century in which society had acquired an attitude that heavily valued the materialistic aspects of life. In order to efficiently express the speaker’s discontent with society, he paints images by using vivid detail throughout the entire poem to allow the reader to experience what the speaker experiences himself. He begins by describing the setting on the streets of California, “I walked down the sidestreets under the trees…/… looking at the full moon” (2-3) and had thoughts of Walt Whitman, a nineteenth century poet whom Ginsberg deeply admired. The setting is essential as it describes the two worlds in which the speaker lives in; one represented by the metropolitan landscape of downtown California and another represented by nature, which the speaker longs to be a part of. The speaker describes himself as a lost soul in search of satisfaction in conventional America, a place where he does no...
“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.
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,
...an philosopher. "And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and burdened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must… eventually… fall." (174) Albee suggests that, behind the façade of the American dream, behind the pretense of American ideals, behind the false front of the tranquility of American society in the early 60's, America's internal corruption and emptiness threatened, and perhaps continue to threaten, the country with a similar fall.