The cultural revolution of the 1960s, with its sexual hedonism, ubiquitous drug use and pseudo spirituality has permanently marred the fabric of American Life. Allen Ginsberg's reading of “HOWL” at the 6 gallery in San Francisco in October 1955 marked the new beginning of a burgeoning anti-establishment sentiment. Ginsberg is one of the most celebrated and popular poets in contemporary American literature. A long time advocate of the country’s disaffected youth, he was a prominent figure in the counter culture and anti-war movements of the 1960s and also a prime member of the Beat generation.

The paper aims at examining a selected few poems of Allen Ginsberg and to locate in them voices of resistance against materialism which is the product of American capitalist system.

Ginsberg’s voice is the voice of Beats who represent disaffected youth of his time. It seems, “ are not satisfied with the environment that asks them to adjust if they are to have monetary and social reward…” (Parkinson, 1987, 183)

Condemnation of materialism, the product of capitalism

Ginsberg targets his attack at materialism, which is the product of capitalism. He fails to make a middle-class method of compromise to adjust to such a hostile world. He hits the old clerks who exploit the employees as they are obsessed with money. He would rather not cut his hair, put on decent clothing, accept conformities in everyday obsessions, but would choose madness as an alternative:

I would rather go mad, gone down the dark to Mexico, heroine dripping in my veins. Eyes and ears full of marijuana, eating the God peyote on the floor of a mud hut on the border or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman: (40)

The hero in Paterson would never yield to social convention, and therefore has no compromise with the pressures of materialistic set up. He would prefer to enjoy ecstatic excesses in praise of eternity that destroys reality, which is rather unbearable.

Ginsberg is shocking his reader into the belief that his life has become invalid and has a senseless existence. The poem “My Alpa” is the realization on the part of the poet that he has wasted his life and bears the loss of long five years entangled in a cultural set up that has deceived the masses : “ deceived multitudes / in vast conspiracies” of ‘money’ and 'serious business'. His life is measured not by coffee spoons but by “side rule and number / machine of a desk / autographed triplicate / synopsis and taxes…” . They all represent a mechanized, worthless life. The ending of the poem creates in the poet an awareness of his existence and future destiny. “I am damned to hell and what/ alarm clock is ringing”(89). He exhorts everybody to run away from the evils of materialism that take away human spirit. Of course, Ginsberg never offers his reader to renounce the worldly pleasure but calls for a spontaneous organic and natural life in which evil spell of materialism will never touch man. His poems are “…always seeking ways to retain the ability to feel in numbing times, always insisting on a social vision that stresses transcendence and the need for spirit in the face of a materialistic culture.” (Tytell 1976b 19). The impact of materialism on human life is the cause of his downfall.

In the poem HOWL the mad youth “lost their love boys to the three old shrews of fate (one of whom is ) the one eyed shrew of heterosexual dollar” (128). The whole hero’s are affected by this heterosexual dollar. For Moloch the “unobtainable dollars” create obsession and encourage competition. In the poem “Autumn Gold : New England Fall” Ginsberg asks for money “ Make Money and your Mind be lost in a million green papers.”(461). Money grows and man declines.

Craze for money leads to war and war is profitable for many which, in its wake brings economic exploitation. The poem “War profit litany” warns to reveal the names of those companies who have been profited through the Vietnam War which include banks, corporate officials and investment houses. His attack on materialism is also an attack on divisive forces like war and its beneficiaries who seize the opportunity to exploit society.

In his poem ‘Magic Psalm’ Ginsberg appeals to God to destroy his region : “Devour my brain…”and “disrupt the world in its madness of bombs and murder…” (256). In other words, he hurls his attack against corporate ethics which is dangerous for growth of human personality. Western society does not easily recognise the intuitive self rather restores faith in rationalism as the only philosophy of life. To quote Paul Portuguese: Ours is after all, a culture steeped in scientific rationalism.” (Portuguese 1978 preface). The holistic growth of individual needs all faculties of his self- Body, Mind, feeling, senses, vision to grow in proper balance. But the western attitude to life that allows the mind to grow is harshly criticized by Ginsberg in his poetry. Mind is equated by Ginsberg as death which like a worm brings destruction to One’s self. Ginsberg’s protest is directed at human mind shaped by corporate mentality that allows no visionary experiences to grow and feeling is repressed for gaining only the business profit. After his thorough reading of Blake’s “Sick Rose” Ginsberg comments “The sick rose is myself, or self, or the living body, sick because the mind, which is the worm “that flies in the night, in the howling storm is destroying it, or let us say death, the worm as being death … trying to come in and devour the body, the rose.” (Clark 38). The mind is the worm that destroys human worth. Ginsberg, therefore, protests against the intellectualisation of human life. Ginsberg sees goodness in the visionary experiences as opposed to a rationalistic philosophy in life. Ginsberg raises his voice against reason-based system of the mind and supports the groups of people in HOWL who are in search of the celestial state of life.

American society rejects the visionary and professes rationalistic attitude and inflicts upon those who resort to the ecstatic vision in life.

The madman is glorified in his poetry and madness, celebrated as a perfect state of existence as a protest against the hegemonic rationalistic order of the American value system. The poem “HOWL” is dedicated to Carl Soloman, a mad man in Columbia psychiatric Institute. The logical system in governance is challenged and dubbed as illogical and imperfect.

Ginsberg’s anger is also directed towards social repression and control. That life is conditioned by the social system is openly disliked by the great poet. Barker holds: “ from his earliest writings, he(Ginsberg) has been the champion of individual freedom, and his lifelong adversary has been social control in its myriad forms and strategies….” Too much social control makes one’s life miserable and individuals are alienated from the system. In “Wild Orphan” describes the state of loneliness of a boy who, feeling lonely, imagines cars and rides them in his dreams.”(78), the boy appears:

So lonely, growing up among the imaginary automobiles and dead souls of Terrytown.(78)

Having relationship in the wilderness of mythic America it has been replaced by the imaginary state of life of modern man who wants to escape from reality. This is emotionally presented by Ginsberg in the poem. The man has lost his freedom and alienation of his characters are used by Ginsberg as a model for protest in his poetry. Poems in “Empty Mirrors” reflect the alienated characters who are completely disappointed by social control. They adopt drugs, resort to wanderings and have sexual curiosity. In HOWL the heros are punished by ‘time’ which is the product of materialistic society as the quest for the “timelessness” which stands for eternal peace. The heroes in HOWL are in a protest through the clocks from the roof “to cast their ballot for eternity, outside of time and alarm clocks fall on their heads every day for the next decade”(129).  In the HOWL youth opposed the cerebral as against the celestial.

The establishment is the enemy of man. It designs conspiracy against humanity. It controls human Destiny. It Challenges human freedom, remarked Ginsberg in one of his essays:

Recent history is the record of a vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind and exterminate all manifestations of that unique part of human sentience, identical in all men, which the individual shares with his creator. (1959, 1)

Establishment frowns upon man, guides and changes his limitless consciousness to limited controlled consciousness as imposed by its agent; bureaucracy, police, corporate, social institutions, academics etc. He had this bitter experience at Coloumbia where he studied, and he was disallowed to write a true story of his friend's murder.

The establishment imposes conditions on man to follow its instructions. It makes him an aimless wanderer as shown in the poem “A Meaningless Institution”:

I was given my bedding, and a bunk in an enormous ward

———— ————- ————- ————

———— ————- ————- ————-

I waited for an unofficial guide to come and give me instructions. After a while, I wandered off down empty corridors in search of a toilet (15)

The aimless wanderings of a lonely man in a public hospital who waits for instructions but in vain. Ultimately, after loitering in empty corridors the man searches for a toilet as his last option. The poem is a silent protest on the confused state of things in a mechanical set up. The establishment is characterized as disorder against an orderly, peaceful state of existence of a mythic, visionary, natural life. For bare necessities, man has to struggle to survive. Society and its establishment will not be tolerant to people who are “ deviants from the mass stereotype; quietists, those who will not work for money or joint armies in murder, and there, as those who wish to loaf, think, rest in vision, act, beautifully and their own, speak truthfully in public…” (Ginsberg, 1959, 8). The establishment always wants conformity to its values. Therefore, the establishment needs to be changed. Ginsberg resisted against the system and incited people to change it.

Primary Sources

1. Ginsberg Allen. Collected Poems 1947-1980 New York: Harper & Row, 1984

2. Ginsberg Allen. Collected Poems 1947-1997 New York: HarperCollins 2007

3. Barker, Philip et. Al., eds. Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: The New Consciousness 1941-1968 Michigan: Gale Researcu Company, 1987

4. Clark, Thomas.  Allen Ginsberg:  An Interview. The Paris Review, 10,37 Spring 1966 13-55.

5. Ginsberg, Allen. Poetry, Violence And The Trembling Lamps. The Village Voice, vol. IV No. 44. Wednesday Aug. 1959 1, 8.

6. Parkinson, Thomas. “Phenomenon or Generation.” In A casebook on The Beats. Ed. Thomas Parkinson New York: Thomas Y. Cornwell, 1961 276-90.

7. Portuges, Paul. The Visionary poetics of Allen Ginsberg Santa Barbara: Ross-Erikson, 1978

8. Tytell, John. Allen Ginsberg and The Messianic Tradition. In his Naked angels: The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976 a 212-57.