The Beats Generation was a literary oppositional movement that highlighted the flaws and denounced the norms and ideals of a conservative and normative society. The architects of the counter-culture movement vilified the corruption of society, as they realized that society’s promises for a safer and better future were just a falsehood. Western society no longer cared for the well-being of its citizens, but instead took whatever means necessary to bolster its economic, military, and political prowess.
On October 7, 1955, Adam Ginsberg read his poem recitation of Howl at the Six Gallery Conference in San Francisco. The reading marked the birth of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg’s piece was a “visceral howl” at society’s hierarchies for destroying “the best minds of [his] generation”. Ginsberg defied all literary and compositional norms as he wrote in free verse and implemented obscene language that criticized society’s faults. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was released soon after, and was a fictitious biography detailing the Beatnik’s mad and aimless travels across the country. Its two protagonists, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, traverse the country looking to discover themselves by living day-to-day, and thrive upon the thrills of life’s vices. They strive to live life to the fullest, free from the constraints and responsibilities of society. The two pieces became defining works of the Beat generation and garnered fame as both were written to contradict society and every norm it stood for; something that hadn’t been done in recent years. Both pieces highlight three motifs that express Ginsberg and Kerouac’s repressed objections: the first, commodification, describes the negative consequences behind society’s efforts for industrial growth. The second, spiritual enlightenment, examines the Beatniks’ desire to experience a spiritual epiphany that comes with renouncing society. The third motif delves into the hypocrisy of societal institutions, namely its greed and inclination to increase its political, economic, and military power.
Ginsberg uses “Moloch”, the ancient biblical creature of sacrifice, as the beginning to each line in his second verse to criticize society’s efforts to increase industrialism, and therefore standardization. Ginsberg’s Howl serves as a “pleurer du coeur” or “cry from the heart”, and a “howl of anxiety”, as Ginsberg fears that society’s expansion will restrain individuality and intellectual uniqueness. His cry to “Moloch” in the second verse of the poem explains what caused the demise of the greatest minds of Ginsberg’s generation. “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies!” identifies Moloch as society’s establishments of consumerism, war, industry, and government that destroys good and peaceful nature for profit. Ginsberg asserts that Moloch is a representation of the classic tradeoff that all societies accept: the tradeoff between freedom and that of security, comfort, and wealth. People sacrifice their individual liberties and intellectual ideas to society, and in return are granted the “rewards” of society: an opportunity to a home, a job, nationwide security, and other luxuries. As society expands, people are made dull by consumerism and greed; all aspects of life become material, hence the commodification of society. People begin to treat unique intellectual ideas as a means to attain more money, and therefore a means to buy more luxuries. Individual contributions become less significant as society expands, and more people devote their ideas to the cyclical cycle that is consumerism. Ginsberg asserts that Moloch becomes increasingly evil and powerful because growing industries and consumerism, in addition the costs that they bear – war, pollution, the rising wage gap between the rich and poor – are seen as ideals and standards of society. The post-World-War-II generation will be grow up learning and revering a lie that will drive the country further and further into its demise. The American Dream, the “national ethos of the United States” that guarantees a house, a car, a chance of upward social mobility, and citizenship, is perhaps society’s biggest farce; with citizenship comes the expense of total freedom and intellectual exploration.
Kerouac’s On the Road furthers Ginsberg’s claim of society’s suffocating on free thought. Kerouac’s first several chapters show Dean and Sal as they venture looking for the “Wild West”; a place of free thinking and unconstrained to the norms laid by an industrial society. The idea of an untamed landscape with new possibilities and horizons thrill the pair, as Sal remarks “The East of my youth, the West of my future” (Kerouac 12). Each western city the duo travel to until the Pacific coastline, however, bores Sal; he begins to realize that each city lacks the adventurous and carefree vibe, as each city has become industrialized, “My moments in Denver were coming to an end, I could feel it when I walked her home, on the way back I stretched out on the grass of an old church with a bunch of old hobos, and their talk made me want to get back on the road,” (Kerouac 36)”. The two search for a Romanticism-esque landscape, void of any cities and free from the constraints of society. Sal eventually realizes that the expansion of industrialism and consumerism are all but inevitable; the Western Dream will cease to exist. Remote locations like the towns Mexico that are free and on the verge of anarchy, where Dean and Sal finally found “Paradise”, are already connected to industrial cities by means of roads. It is only a matter of time before those remote villages become legitimate cities.
The second motif is the Beatniks’ search for a sense of spiritual enlightenment. In Howl, Ginsberg praises the outcasts of society as their underlying goal is to reveal an epiphany. Beggars, drug addicts, drunks, homosexuals, and the rest of the deadbeats of society have escaped the mechanical, slavery-like, and uniform conditions of society. These people seek spiritual enlightenment, and cast the comforts that society can provide to do so. The outcasts are stripped of everything, both physical and abstract: their properties, wealth, and societal influence. Ginsberg alludes these men to Saints, as they sacrifice society with a true goal in mind. Towards the end of his first verse, Ginsberg connects the stripped and cast men to Jesus as he is bound, stripped, and nailed to the cross by the Roman postulate, “eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani” or “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. The “whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement”, who have been cast from society are the “holy” and “beatific”; Ginsberg argues that they are on a true, unbent path towards enlightenment. Ginsberg also compares the “best minds of the generation” to medieval Christian Saints, namely St. John of the Cross, in the middle of his first stanza, as St. John too rejected society’s comforts to stay true to his pious path. In doing so, Ginsberg states that the outcasts who are looking for a psychedelic and spiritual experience are more holy than the current religious institutions of society as those establishments have become corrupt, and have lost sight of their true purpose.
Dean is the epitome of the unbent holy figure in On the Road. Dubbed by Ginsberg as the “Adonis of Denver”, Dean represents freedom: he is free to do what he wishes regardless of the law, he is free of his responsibilities, and free from living a standard life. Dean is a metaphor for Sal’s Messiah, and a savior to enlighten Sal on how to live. Dean shows no regard for the lawful consequences of his actions, and is labeled a criminal and bad influence by the people the duo come across, including Big Bull and Lee Ann. Dean, a broke and family-less man pursues his version of spiritual enlightenment, that is to undertake life’s vices in order to live “It” to the fullest. Stealing cars, whoring across the country, and consuming illegal hallucinogenic drugs are all ways for Dean to live in a emotional state of bliss, and experience his heaven.
Heavily influenced by the Romanticism literary and visual works of Edgar Allen Poe, Paul Cezanne, and Caspar David Friedrich, Ginsberg too denounces society’s hypocrisy in its mission to create a safer and more perfect place for the world. Ginsberg blames the United States, the most economic, militaristic, and political progressive and dominant country in the wake of the Second World War for enforcing lies through all of its major institutions.