Howl
Howl is Allen Ginsberg’s most famous piece. It is his poetic cry for his generation, his dismay, his anger, his grief, his confusion, and even emotions that may be sexual frustration are expressed in it, and are extended to his whole generation. While, by some definitions, a work of fiction, it is the real reaction of Ginsberg to the institutionalisation of his good friend Carl Solomon in Rockland Mental hospital.
Howl is heavy in its emotional content. All its anger is clearly placed at the American System. It was written while Ginsberg waited for Solomon to return. Solomon, whose name is proclaimed as Holy in the footnotes right beside that of Kerouac and Cassady, represents to Ginsberg the Beat generation. He sees this whole affair as the attempt of the American system to destroy Ginsberg and the “best minds of his generation.” At least in that moment, Ginsberg sees the whole counterculture as destroyed, sees the whole thing as failed. In the middle of the 50’s he saw rampant conformity, women back at home, or behind desks, and a society where television made everything completely homogenous, and for the brief moment of panic, he saw that those were fixing to reform this society were all destroyed. He thought madness had killed them, as they sat on “rooftops in tenement halls contemplating jazz.”.
While this is a failure of the American System to stop the growth of individualism, it still shows the incessant attempts of the society of rebels to quash its internal rebellions. It shows the sheer pressure, both by physical imprisonment and even just by the diagnosis of rebellion as insanity, that America is always looking for underhanded ways to stop reformers.
But, every once in a while, counterculture doesn't oppose America. Sometimes, those movements take the status of being an American into their very core, and see that America can be a society of rebels.
Howl is heavy in its emotional content. All its anger is clearly placed at the American System. It was written while Ginsberg waited for Solomon to return. Solomon, whose name is proclaimed as Holy in the footnotes right beside that of Kerouac and Cassady, represents to Ginsberg the Beat generation. He sees this whole affair as the attempt of the American system to destroy Ginsberg and the “best minds of his generation.” At least in that moment, Ginsberg sees the whole counterculture as destroyed, sees the whole thing as failed. In the middle of the 50’s he saw rampant conformity, women back at home, or behind desks, and a society where television made everything completely homogenous, and for the brief moment of panic, he saw that those were fixing to reform this society were all destroyed. He thought madness had killed them, as they sat on “rooftops in tenement halls contemplating jazz.”.
While this is a failure of the American System to stop the growth of individualism, it still shows the incessant attempts of the society of rebels to quash its internal rebellions. It shows the sheer pressure, both by physical imprisonment and even just by the diagnosis of rebellion as insanity, that America is always looking for underhanded ways to stop reformers.
But, every once in a while, counterculture doesn't oppose America. Sometimes, those movements take the status of being an American into their very core, and see that America can be a society of rebels.