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Sam Wisotsky
Paul Lopez
American Literature
1 December 2010
The Beats: Poetry
In a consumption-based society driven by materialism and conformity, where
conformity was the norm and alternative views were considered a threat, the Beats
emerged. The Beats were a group of influential writers critical of post World War II
society. Their movement was classified by alternative political views, experimentation
with drugs and sexuality, and spiritual awareness. The Beats expressed these feelings
through poetry and literature and would later be defined by the free-form and pioneering
style that they created. They used their writing as a venue to rebel against conformity and
express the Beat ideology. Two of the most influential Beat writers were Jack Kerouac
and Allen Ginsberg; their literary works represent the Beat culture and movement.
The Beats were raised in a society that enforced [materialism and conformity], but
largely neglected the institutionalized struggles of particular groups of people and
movements like the equal rights movement. These groups were shunned in part because
of they represented a rebellion agianst norm of society and was considered a threat.
Following the hardships of the Great Depression and World War II, people celebrated
their return to a stable economy, an end to fighting in Europe and the opportunity to
pursue the ideals of the “American Dream”. Behind this preferred outlook on the world,
many of the social injustices that had historically plagued America still persisted. Women
took over the jobs in factories while there was a shortage of male workers due the war
and when they came home, the women were expected to return to their position as
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housewives (kclibrary.lonestar.edu) and in addition to the expectations society held
regarding women, they were portrayed as helpless in the media and were pressured into
fulfilling the expectations of keeping the house clean and abiding to all of their husband’s
rules and demands. This pressure for women to conform was even in the schools, there is
an essay that speaks about “how to be a perfect housewife” and it reads:
Have dinner ready. Prepare yourself. Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your
hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a
little gay and a little more interesting. Clear away the clutter…run a dust cloth
over the tables (Lifestyle2).
These pressures to conform were everywhere and constantly evident in advertisements,
magazines and commercials, they trying to mold women into a text book “homemaker”
(Lifestyle2).
The equal rights movement for African Americans was on a steady rise with
African-American protests and the realization of the injustices of the African-American
children who were being segregated in schools and considered second class citizens.
The television was a new invention and commercialization was on the rise. (Due
to the lack of men in the country because of the war, companies were marketing more
products to teenagers). The television led to the Mickey Mouse club which focused
advertisements directly towards teenagers. The television didn’t just bring cartoons and
advertisements, it also set the bar for the the “ideal” teenager should look like and what
the “ideal” family was, it was pressuring children and adults to go out and buy things to
be considered “normal,”. The term teenager was actually coined in the time period to
describe a young adult who was not yet free from his or her parents (Donoho 1).
Commercials and advertisements were ubiquitous and targeted younger children. Living
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in a world full of “the solve it all product” added a social pressure towards the college
youth. It created unnecessary stress to young lives. This kind of pressure could only lead
to one thing—social rebellion! The Beat movement was this social rebellion. It
challenged society’s norms by preaching spiritual enlightenment free from material goods
which directly opposed the advertising world.
At the foundation of the Beat movement was freedom of expression and of
alternative political and social views. This was most present in the Beat poetry. Beat
poetry had distinct characteristics that departed from more traditional forms of poetry.
The poetry that was created invoked different forms of religion and freedom of sexuality.
These writers were raised in an anti-communist society. The country was in a
second Red Scare and was rallying against North Korea and against Communism. This
scare was the American government providing propaganda against alternative views on
economical systems, and trying to unleash the inner patriot within the masses to fight
blindly against the “Commies”.
The Soviet Union became more powerful and the United States began to worry
about Communism spreading—the U.S. called it the Domino Effect. The Domino Effect
was the belief that if any nation was converted to Communism that it would set off a
chain reaction of Communist ideals that spread across the world and threaten the U.S.
capitalist society. This “Red Threat” led to McCarthyism. The term “McCarthyism” was
coined in the 1950s when Joseph McCarthy read his list of accused Communists. He
states in his speech at the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia,
I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made
known to the Secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party
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and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State
Department.
McCarthy accursed people of being a Communist without any real evidence
which then resulted in the accused being black-listed and losing their job and the source
of their income. Most of these claims were fictional and used as a ploy to discredit
politicians. It got out of hand in 1940 when the Smith Act was put into effect. The Smith
Act stated that [anyone knowingly, advise, or teach the desire to overthrow the
government by force, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches and
encourages it to be a criminal offense.] The society was rallying against the Communists
by blaming each other and using the Red Scare to rise in the ranks of the social and
political order (www.spartacus.schoolnet). Many groups formed, like the American
Public Relations Forum which was an anti communist group for Catholic women. The
people being targeted weren’t only the politicians many controversial black writers were
black listed like W.E.B De Bois and Langston Hughes.
The pressure to conform to the capitalist ideal was evident during this modern
Salem witch trial. The pressure to conform caused the aforementioned women to be
portrayed in the media as housewives and homemakers not business women. They were
thought to only have one job, to serve the husband and keep up the house hold. No birth
control was marketed towards these women because they were told to find their money
winning husband who would financialy support them. Jack Kerouac was forced into
marriage to his wife Edie Parker for bail money when he was arrested for being an
accessory to the murder.
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There were many pieces of writing that were inspired by these events and social
pressures. Many of these novels and poems had a deeper meaning, about standing up and
facing a capitalist society and rebelling through anti conformity. In a lot of Beat poetry
there is reference to drugs and alcohol usage, like in Howl by Allen Ginsberg, “with
dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,”(Howl
1), he is talking about the destruction of his generation and how he watches it be
destroyed.
Not all inspiration came from injustices and substance abuse, some came from
music. Jazz helped form the tone for the poetry, it was an open, free form of music that
didn’t have boundaries and was often viewed as anti-conformist. Free form spoken poetry
was often associated with jazz and became a huge breakthrough in poetry; it was
spontaneous and random. Some famous jazz musicians that captured the genre include
Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday. This Jazz music represented the essence
of the poetry and was purely from the heart. Spoken word poetry was all about
expression. It wasn’t meant to be captured on paper but a spur of the moment kind of
creativity.
Jazz music helped to inspire Jack Kerouac, one of the founders of the movement
to write On the Road because Kerouac was on a road trip with a man named Neal
Cassidy who wrote poetry in the free form that jazz had. This helped Kerouac find the
writing style he wanted. While on the road trip Jack began writing his novel he wrote it
all on one piece of paper called “the scroll” he did this because he didn’t want to change
his thoughts for each page he wanted to have one thought captured on one page. Kerouac
searched for his own “Spontaneity” for this novel and wanted to express his thoughts
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throughout it and be truly genuine. He wrote the first draft of “On the Road” in three
weeks and had it published years later, he claimed to have nothing stronger than coffee as
a stimulant throughout the writing process (Sante 1). This novel captures him and Neal
on their journeys with a lot of it being a chronicle of their journey, Kerouac did change
the names of the characters in the story. His novel truly captures the essence of the Beat
movement, not only because it was written in a different style but the story of his alter
ego (Sal), a troubled man who doesn’t want to follow society’s guidelines and does not
have a direction in his life. He is simply living from place to place and discovering
himself through travel.
“They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the
underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly
joining.” (Kerouac 156)
Ginsberg displayed and read his poem “Howl” in an art gallery in San Francisco
in 1955. This revolutionized the movement; poets were ecstatic about “Howl” and the
way it presents how capitalism and conformity rule over the people in the U.S.
“who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with
big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of
Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and
undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down
Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,”
Howl was thought to be an obscene piece of literature due to its references of
homosexual sex and drug use and during a time where the sodomy laws were in place and
homosexual sex was considered a felony this was considered an obscene statement
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(Silberman 1). Ginsberg won the trial and no charges were pressed against the publisher,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
This trial led to the widespread interest in the poem and people began to read it
and realize its message (Silberman 1).
“Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and
Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast
stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!
Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!
Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand
in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and
croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!”
The message being anti conformity anti government. Not only “Howl” but the
entirety of Beat poetry helped to inspire a new generation that questioned the
government. It also sought to destroy social norms as a whole and created individual
awareness. People began to become self aware of what they were and what rights they
wanted. This all impacted the later years of the 60s and 70s where rebellion was an all
time high and civil rights battles and equal rights battles were being fought on the battle
ground of American society.
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Works Cited
"9000 Earmarks." Web log post. Privatebuffoon.blogspot.com.
26 Feb. 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010.
<http://privatebuffoon.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html>.
"American History - 1950-1959." Lone Star College-Kingwood Library Home Page.
Web. 30 Sept. 2010.
<http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade50.html>.
Asher, Levi. "Lucien Carr."
Web log post. Http://www.litkicks.com. 8 Nov. 1994. Web. 30 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.litkicks.com/LucienCarr>.
Bignell, Paul, and Andrew Johnson. "On the Road (uncensored).”
Discovered: Kerouac 'cuts'" The Independent [London]
29 July 2007. Print.
Chandarlapaty, Raj.
"Introduction." The Beat Generation and Counterculture: Paul Bowles
William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Print.
Donoho, Lauren. "Teenagers Then and Now." Hoteldel.com. 1 Jan. 2008.
Web. 05 Oct. 2010.
<http://www.hoteldel.com/PressReleaseTemplate.aspx?id=490>.
Lahiri, Shubhajit. "On the Road -Jack Kerouac."
Culturazzi. 17 Nov. 2008. Web. 30 Sept. 2010.
<http://culturazzi.org/review/literature/on-the-road-jack-kerouac>.
Lifestyle. "A Woman's Role in the 1950s, Page 2 of 4." Associated Content –
Associatedcontent.com. Web. 06 Oct. 2010.
<http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/13216/a_womans_role_in_the_1950s_
pg2.html?cat=41>.
"McCarthyism." Spartacus Educational - Home Page.
Web. Sept.-Oct. 2010.
<http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmccarthyism.htm>.
"On the Road." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.
Web. 01 Oct. 2010.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_road>.
Parkins, Keith. "Beat Generation." C L a R a . N E T - Customer Index. 2005.
Web. 01 Oct. 2010.
<http://home.clara.net/heureka/art/beat-generation.htm>.
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Sante, Luc. "On the Road Again." New York Times
19 Aug. 2007: 1. Print.
Silberman, Steve. "How Beat Happened."
Ezone. Web. 30 Sept. 2010.
<http://ezone.org/ez/e2/articles/digaman.html>.