The Beats were a literary group that formed in the United States in the 1950’s. The founding members started out as college friends, attending Columbia University, who had similar interests. The small group of friends soon acquired more like minded individuals in the New York area and became a movement. The common theme of the group was the rejection of the prevalent middle-class values in the United States. They also felt that modern society lacked purpose and they felt the need to withdraw and protest. (Parkins) The group became known as the “Beat Generation” due to their message of being “beaten down” by society. (Matterson) The group eventually migrated from New York, to San Francisco, California where they gained even more members. This paper will briefly discuss some of the members of “The Beats” and what impact the movement had on society in the United States.
The two founding members of the Beats were Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Jack and Allen met while they were students at Columbia University. Jack Kerouac was born in 1922 in Massachusetts. He was attending the university on a football scholarship. (Feider) Allen Ginsberg was born in 1926, in New Jersey. He was attending the university on a scholarship from the YMCA. (Feider) Kerouac and Ginsberg both enjoyed literature and began spending time together using benzodiazepines and marijuana to fuel their creativity. (Feider) William Burroughs joined the two friends after they met in Manhattan. Burroughs who was born in 1914 in Missouri, had been found unfit to serve in the military during WWII. (Rahn) He had been spending his time doing odd jobs. Together, these three and some others, including; Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady, and Herbert Huncke ...
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...July 1994. www.litkicks.com/BeatGen/#.UyiEjk4o7IU. (March 17, 2014).
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Beat movement (American literary and social movement)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica. www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/57467/Beat-movement. (March 17, 2014).
Feider, Megan. "Beatnik Writers." Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs. www.bluesforpeace.com/beat-generation.htm. (March 18, 2014).
Matterson, Stephen. "Mid-1950s -1960s Beat Generation." PBS. PBS. www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/beatgeneration.html. (March, 19, 2014).
Parkins, Keith. "Beat Generation." Beat Generation. Mar. 2005. www.heureka.clara.net/art/beat-generation.htm. (March 18, 2014).
Rahn, Josh. "The Beat Generation." - Literature Periods & Movements. www.online-literature.com/periods/beat.php. (March 17, 2014).
From the outside, the 1950’s was a great time for America. Society revolved around the idea of America being a middle-class nation. Americans worshipped conformity, and materialism satisfied the need to conform. However, the prosperity of materialistic America hid the growing, numerous problems. Dissent in any way was not tolerated; all injustice was stifled by a fear of difference. In “Fifties Society,” Alan Brinkley discusses the truth of the era; that the fear of nonconformity was hidden by the seemingly prosperous middle-class nation. Brinkley argues the Beat movement and “feminine mystique” show that the people who did not fit in reveal the true colors of 1950’s society.
Tytell, John. "The Beat Generation and the Continuing American Revolution". American Scholar 42 (1973): 308-317.
Tupac Amaru Shakur born in East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City. His birth name was Lesane Parish Crooks, June 16 1971. His both parents were members of the Black Panther Party. Tupac Shakur was a vocal participant during the East Coast and West Coast hip hop rivalry. He went to High School in California and Maryland. His career brought him back to New York City. Forget about his education and family background, thinking about how he put himself into his career so successfully. To succeed and accomplishment that made him in legacy…..
To sacrifice oneself and save others is what we've known as human love, and we have also learned that we should respect those who could perform that in any situation, but in reality, the numbers of those people who don't care about what others do seems much greater than the number of those who do. In Stephen Crane's story, "The Monsters", Henry Johnson who sacrifices himself into the fire in order to save a little boy gets treated like a monster just because his face has "burned away"(84). This is very serious problem because it's not what happens only in the book, but also in our present lives.
In the 1950s rock-n-roll established its own marks in history. It spread throughout the decade in a thrilling, substantial, and even livid to those Americans trying to get rid of all sorts of conflicts and challenges that occurred during this time period. As exciting as this music was, the novel “All Shook Up” portrays how rock-n-roll brought many changes to the American culture and later to the sixties. It expresses many concerns such as race relations, moral decays, and communism, but in ways that are partially true.
In 1961, previous to the outbreak of Occupy Wall Street, Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park was filled with three–thousand young beatnik protestors. Playing instruments and singing folk music symbolized the starvation that these young folks wanted of freedom and equality for America. Protestors demonstrated mixed cultures, individualistic beliefs that went against the status quo of America after the post-war years. The Beatnik Riot involved young traditional Americans fighting not just for the musical crisis of that time, but for the social, racial, and cultural segregations that were brought on by the years of war. Acting as a catalytic reaction, the Beatnik Riot put in motion a new modernized America.
In the same fashion that Elvis defined Rock ‘n’ Roll; Tupac Shakur defined the hip-hop music scene, as we know it today. What made Tupac (also known as 2Pac, or Makaveli) so special were his enormous talent, his on screen friendly looks, and the sense that he was “real” and talked the talk, while walking the walk. Tupac was born on June 16, 1971, Tupac Amaru Shakur. He was named after Tupac Amaru, the Inca Indian that was sentenced to death by the Spaniards. He was originally from Brooklyn, New York. Tupac spent a lot of time moving around as he was growing up. He was the son of a Black Panther activist Afeni Shakur and Billy Garland. Tupac moved from Harlem, to Baltimore, to Oakland. The constant moving caused Tupac to fit into his new communities by joining gangs, and his lengthy rap sheet was created even before his profalic entry into music and film. He was arrested eight times before even turning twenty (MTV.com).
Gustainis, Justin. “Serial Killers.” Bowling, Beatniks, and Bell-Bottoms: Pop Culture of 20th- Century America. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast.
The 1960’s was one of the most controversial decades in American history because of not only the Vietnam War, but there was an outbreak of protests involving civil and social conditions all across college campuses. These protests have been taken to the extent where people either have died or have been seriously injured. However, during the 1960’s, America saw a popular form of art known as protest music, which responded to the social turmoil of that era, from the civil rights movement to the war in Vietnam. A veritable pantheon of musicians, such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan sang their songs to encourage union organizers to protest the inequities of their time, creating a diverse variety of popular protest music, which has reached out to the youthful generations everywhere demanding for a revolutionary change. The protest music took the children of the 1960’s to a completely new different level. Musicians of this generation were not going to sit and do nothing while the government lied to the people about what was going on in Vietnam. Instead, they took their guitar-strumming troubadours from the coffee houses, plugged them in, and sent the music and the message into the college dorm rooms and the homes of the youth of America. However, as decades went by, protest music does not have much of an impact as it use to because of the way things have changed over the years. Through the analysis of the music during the 1960’s, there shall be an understanding on how the different genres of protest music has affected social protesters based on how musicians have become the collective conscience of that generation through their lyrics and music and the main factors that contributed to the lack of popula...
Tytell, John. Naked Angels: the Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
--Topic Sentence--Tupac and Biggie both were born in New York, spending their early years there. Tupac was primarily from the East Harlem section of Manhattan New York City, New York, but he moved multiple times in his youth. Tupac moved to Baltimore,
Firstly, the group of friends and writers most commonly known as the Beats evolved dramatically in focal points such as Greenwich Village and Columbia University, and subsequently spread their political and cultural views to a wider audience. The three Beat figureheads William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac each perceived an agenda within American society to clamp down on those who were in some way different from the accepted ‘norm’, and in response deliberately flirted with the un-American practices of Buddhism, drug use, homosexuality and the avant-garde. Ginsberg courted danger by lending a voice to the homosexual subculture that had been marginalised by repressive social traditions and cultural patterns within the United States.
In the late 1940s, Beat poetry began in New York City and migrated west to San Francisco where by the late 1950s, they established and left a legacy. The poets were ignited from a movement against social conformity. They questioned mainstream politics, material society, and censorship or restrained literary traditions. Like many typical young persons, they rebelled against expectations in reach for “higher consciousness” through psychedelic drug use, alcohol consumption, sexual discovery, and spiritual exploration. With their lawlessness, addictions, discontent, and egos, these bohemian artists lived a life of spontaneity and creativity, but not without casualties. Gary Snyder commented on the subject of "casualties" of the Beat Generation:
The Beat Generation was an influence on the American society during the twentieth century on how they portrayed the way of the American dream through performing arts. It all began in the 1950’s where a bunch of writers got together to right about how much they resented the postwar society (Sterritt, 1). It was right after War World II had past and the postwar age was very unsettling for the beat writers. It was turning into a conservative lifestyle and the beats wanted a way of showing that there writings would make an impact of what and how they thought of society and postwar. They too, like many others were effected greatly by the war and wanted a way of rebelling towards all the pain they went through during the war. This began the introduction of the Beat Generation.
The sixties was a decade of liberation and revolution, a time of great change and exciting exploration for the generations to come. It was a time of anti-war protests, free love, sit-ins, naked hippie chicks and mind-altering drugs. In big cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Paris, there was a passionate exchange of ideas, fiery protests against the Vietnam War, and a time for love, peace and equality. The coming together of like-minded people from around the world was spontaneous and unstoppable. This group of people, which included writers, musicians, thinkers and tokers, came to be known as the popular counterculture, better known as hippies. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius in the late sixties was more than just a musical orgy. It was a time of spiritual missions to fight for change and everything they believed in. Freedom, love, justice, equality and peace were at the very forefront of this movement (West, 2008). Some wore beads. Some had long hair. Some wore tie-dye and others wore turtle-neck sweaters. The Hippie generation was a wild bunch, to say the least, that opened the cookie jar of possibilities politically, sexually, spiritually and socially to forever be known as one of the most memorable social movements of all time (Hippie Generation, 2003).