Allen Ginsbergs Howl free essay sample

Those ‘best minds’ wasn’t understood in universities, and they ‘were expelled’ (18), it shows how the academic institutions were controlled by the political institutions of his period, trying to hind in that way, the evolution of a new kind of consciousness emerging little by little in that period, the beat idiosyncrasy. The text even tells about a real event in Ginsberg’s life, in which he was accused of obscenity after writing a message on the window of his bedroom, when he describes ‘obscene odes on the windows of the skull’ (14-15). In this Post-War period, people move to big cities as New York and its suburb as Brooklyn, or Bronx (24, 39, 42), in which those cities were full of ‘new intellectual movements’ as music, art and literature, but as well, overflow of alcohol, drugs and sex, in which Ginsberg depicted those cities ‘with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls’ (25-29) or ‘on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down (42-44). We will write a custom essay sample on Allen Ginsbergs Howl or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In this respect, Ginsberg makes a direct emphasis to the uses of drugs, many kind of drugs, and its diverse effects that those drugs provoke on their everyday life. Ginsberg depicts their erratic behavior when describes them ‘jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon’ (52-54) or when ‘screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails’ (55-59). Religion and mythology, is another point of interest in Ginsberg’s philosophy. For him as for the beat generation, the study of Eastern religions, mysticism and philosophy was something fascinated, ‘Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah (73-74). Then, Ginsberg describes through some kinds of travels, the worldly experiences in different parts of the States, from New York to Oklahoma, from Houston to Mexico, until the ‘West coast’ (93). Ginsberg continues describing and condemning how they were seen as communists and there were chased as criminals (108-109), when, from his point of view, it seem as there was nothing wrong in their acts. From line 110 and on, the thematic of the poem changes, depicting all the sexual behaviors on the beat generation, free sex, homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual sex, full depicted, as the only and most important thing in life, as ‘howled on their knees in the subway’ (110), or ‘let themselves be fucked in the ass’ (113). Even depicting many place for meet new o more sex partners, as places of cruising as cemeteries, public parks (118) or a ‘Turkish Bath’ (122). All this free-sex behavior is shown by Ginsberg as seem as something natural in life, as something that shouldn’t be hided. Then, Ginsberg returns to New York again, describing many events related to many of his friends during the period that he spent there. As a kind of psychedelic diary, a product shaped in that way due to the use of drugs, the poem is transformed little by little in a kind of diary in which we can read and learn, about the life of the beats and about the experiences and point of view of life of Allen Ginsberg. After being documenting many stories about many of the ‘best minds’ of his generation, Ginsberg starts now to describe some events on the life of Carl Solomon, to whom he had dedicated the whole poem. Those events, in which are described their period in a mental institution, shown the therapies that they suffer inside the madhouse, in order to be ‘fixed’. In conclusion, the first part of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, is a harsh critic to the political power of his period, the problems on the post-war society and a documentary on his own life, and his best friends. A group of people who was sicken about the new society created by the capitalism and consumerism, in which their angst about life made then to look for relief in sex and drugs, and in which their reaction against the mainstream, made then to be consider as communist and being pursued, and rejected by their society.