Analysis Of Allen Ginsberg Howl

During a time so many people romanticize, there were few who saw America for what it was. Electric chairs, lobotomies, and other tortures masquerading as therapies--this is what America truly was in the 1950s. Following the Korean War, America was in an era of great fragility. Speech and art that challenged the status quo of pro-military, pro-USA ideals were rejected. Allen Ginsberg and his peers were among the minority of artists at the time, willing to introduce controversial--sometimes offensive--art into the melting pot of America. At times, they faced repercussions, such as when Ginsberg published Howl and Other Poems. Howl, in particular, contained language that most modest Americans at the time would deem indecent. Even so, Ginsberg
Ginsberg wrote with an autobiographical sense, almost as though it is a preface to the rest of the poem. Throughout part one, Ginsberg used techniques that are characteristic of Walt Whitman, and as Richard Eberhart said, "Ginsberg thinks he is going forward by going back to the methods of Whitman." (qtd. in "On 'Howl'"). Ginsberg used the technique of writing with long lines, a technique Whitman often employed. This provides the poem with a feeling similar to that of a run on sentence, giving it the feeling of being angered and hurried. This is effective in making the reader feel broken down, similar to how the “hipsters” are described as feeling. Part two serves as a climax in relation to the more introductory first part. The comparison of Moloch to modern institutions was clever, giving those institutions a more monstrous effect. As the repetitive chanting of “Moloch” continues, Ginsberg speaks of people breaking “...their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!” (Ginsberg 90). Here, he is speaking of those oppressed by these institutions. This is figurative of society constantly trying to improve upon living conditions: making it more Heaven-like for those that are privileged enough to experience the fruit of other’s labors. Parts one and two of Howl are especially raw, a characteristic that today give it a progressive quality, as well as a deep insight into the oppression of the 1950s. In the final part, Ginsberg addresses Carl Solomon, borrowing even more from Walt Whitman’s writing style. Ginsberg reunites with Solomon, telling him “I’m here with you in Rockland where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void” (Ginsberg 107). Another of the real-world elements Ginsberg incorporated into Howl, Carl Solomon actually underwent shock therapy to