When analysing the representative role of dissent in American literature, strong acknowledgement of the literature’s historical and cultural context is a vital tool. It is arguable that dissent – as well as the circumstances instigating said dissent – was one of, if not the main catalyst for literature that has been considered to be inherently ‘American’. This is of course dependent on the certain theoretical and critical approaches utilised in interpreting the literature being analysed.
Historian Ralph Young recently published a book which implies the stated argued approach titularly – ‘Dissent’. Young contends that dissent is one of his nation’s “most defining characteristics”, suggesting that although the circumstantial status quo of America depicts and disregards dissenters as ‘unpatriotic’, Young argues that dissent “is one of the consummate expressions of ‘Americanness’. This is reminiscent of themes expressed in Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl & America’ in which Ginsberg displays the notion of patriotic dissent as paradoxical through offering two dualistic opposing themes. (QUOTE GINSY)
Jonah Raskin (his book n that) viewed this contradictory feature of Howl through a Marxist perspective, suggesting that Ginsberg offers “two contrary, though not necessarily irreconcilable ideas-one Marxist and political, and the other Buddhist and spiritual.”
Raskin suggests that Howl’s role in dissent representation exhibits the suffering of people at the hands of a capitalist society, yet simultaneously promotes the notion that “human beings are the authors of their own suffering”(Raskin), and that not all victims are innocent, leading themselves to slaughter as Howl depicts – “chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy / Bronx.” (Howl) These contradictory elements of the poem display what Keats called ‘negative capability’ – the ability to hold paradoxical thoughts without irascible reaching for fact and reason. Ginsberg uses this ability in Howl to represent his role in American dissent of his time.
This dualistic theme of Howl highlights Ginsberg’s perceived contradictions of conventional American culture. While in Howl Ginsberg rages against the system-personifying symbol of‘Moloch’ and ‘the bomb’ he also eventually comes to state that he “loves the bomb”, because abolishing it would only add to its extreme influence over humanity. This idea implies that dissent from the cultural context of Howl was also inherently contradictory. Ginsberg identifies as a political dissenter of the time but highlights that the dissenters also hold contradicting thoughts that do not achieve fact or reason. (QUOTE?)
Although Raskin analyses Howl with loose Marxist theories, he acknowledges that Ginsberg was not necessarily adhering to Marxist ideology in Howl, but more so attempting to portray American dissent of his respective time for what he saw it as – futile and contradictory resistance to the dominant cultural powers.
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This relates back to Young’s approach in analysing themes of dissent, as he displays a very politically neutral view of dissent’s role in literature, especially in comparison to other analysts such as Howard Zinn – who in ‘A Peoples History of the United States’, isolates dissent as a left-wing phenomenon, emphasising movements caused by dissent amongst the downtrodden. (TRY FIND A QUOTE)
In Young’s analysation of dissent in literature, he recognises that “it was in the Beat movement that a literature of dissent made a frontal assault on the political, social, and cultural orthodoxy of the times.” Young acknowledges how Ginsberg’s role as a publicly unapologetic homosexual as well as a controversial, outcast-commending poet was hugely crucial in the history of dissent representation.
When analysing the importance of Ginsberg’s role in America’s literary representation of dissent, Walt Whitman is crucial in understanding the influence of literary dissent representation in America, especially when exploring themes of stigmatic homosexuality. Whitman’s influence on Ginsberg is unmistakable, which holds contextual significance as counter-cultural writers are known to self-define as standing alone or against the dominant culture, which shows how influential Whitman’s role was in dissent representation.
Whitman could be considered the first American poet to openly address being a homosexual – which is crucial in analysing the development of how dissent was to be represented in American literature as Whitman’s exhibited issues with his sexual identity was immensely influential for Ginsberg and other dissented gay American poets that wrote after him.
In comparison between Whitman and Ginsberg, evident influence between the two poets extends all the way from the intricacy of their personal lives within their respective contextual periods, to the utilisation of unconventional literary devices – especially seen in ‘Song of Myself’ and ‘Howl’. An example of this in ‘Song of Myself’ (lines 936-938), is in the passage:
“What stills the traveler come to the vault at Mount Vernon, What sobers the Brooklyn boy as he looks down the shores of the Wallabout and
remembers the prison ships, What burnt the gums of the redcoat at Saratoga when he surrendered his brigades”
(Whitman 30)
Relying heavily on allusions, this passage shares a hanging indent and parallel structure with this next passage from ‘Howl’:
“who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah
because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa” (Ginsberg 12)
Each long line in these two passages is secured by a pronoun before an active verb. This constructs a foundation for the features contained in the individual line and the accumulated list. Beat writers such as Ginsberg would attempt to create bop-like, jazz-inspired in order to produce raw outpourings of language to defy literary convention as well as emphasise emotions of dissent. This bop-like influence is clear in the passage from ‘Howl’ – if the pronoun and verb was picked out of the beginning of each line, the passage is left with an eruption of shuffled thoughts and ideas rapidly preached by the speaker. This particular style utilised by Ginsberg draws great influence from the rhetoric of Whitman. In the passage from ‘Song of Myself’, without the opening pronoun and verb, the lines are clipped into a collection of speedily preached statements, defying dominant literary forms to pursue a dissented structure.
When referring to Whitman in ‘Dissent’, Young mentions the poet’s focus on the positive achievements of democracy and the common American man in poems such as ??