Ginsbergs friends Essay Example for Free

Ginsbergs friends Essay Howl is a dive into the other America, the city of night, the city of outcasts, beatniks and all those branded mad by regular society. The poem is for Carl Solomon, one of Ginsbergs friends, who was assigned to mental asylum Rockland where youre madder than I am, as Ginsberg states in the first line of the third stanza. But all the way through he is with him, declaring himself one with Solomon and as such with everyone who is considered an outcast, anyone who dares to go against the flow and herd-like mentality of his time. Howl is a comment on the stifling conformity of America of that time, being the Eisenhower era. The poem crosses many barriers. References to drugs abound, and Ginsberg himself has declared many times how he wrote the poem under the influence of peyote in an attempt to broaden the workings of the mind. The first stanza is a 78-line volcanic outburst of spontaneity in which Ginsberg presents through a stream of consciousness-technique image after image of the rejects of modern society, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls (Howl, line 10, 11). Grammatical rules are challenged in Howl. The only way to present the truth is to allow this long stream of thoughts to be poured out uninterrupted, spontaneous and dense, leaving the reader time to reflect upon what has been said, as the next image is already being presented, and after that another one and so on. The words follow the pattern of natural breathing and after the necessary pause for air, a new image follows before the reader can reflect upon the next image. The poem has to be read from beginning to end, as it is an indivisible unity. The city that had an overall positive portrayal in Leaves of Grass has become a bleak world where artificial light and colors dominate the landscape. Whitmans seas of bright juice have been exchanged for neon lights’. The excitement for the dawn of the age of democracy has waned, as each individual became a replica of another, mimicking the patterns and behavior of each other creating a monotonous existence with no room for all those who are different, who want to be different, and who aspire to do something different. In a world where being different is frowned upon, there is little hope for individuality and freedom, and Ginsberg created a world for all whose existence is being denied by society in his poetry. The way to achieve this is through an unrestricted outpouring of truth. To do this, the poet has to expand his boundaries, and Ginsberg did this literally. Ginsberg went on the road to further explore the world around him. Only then can he look for eternity: who drove cross-country seventy-two hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity (Howl, line 60). We find the same quest for eternity in line 54, where it is linked to the wish to cross the boundaries of time: who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade. In the second stanza, Ginsberg evokes the Moloch line after line, like a chant or hymn. The Moloch is clearly a reference to modern society. Once more we discover how the city, still full of hope in Whitmans world, has left modern man destitute: What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? (79). In the modern world, there is no place for outcasts, run as it is by money: Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch whose blood is running money! Whereas Whitman was positive about the city extending its boundaries upwards, in Ginsbergs world this has become a burden: They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven!