Postmodernist Views on Ginsberg’s Howl
Postmodernism is a movement of diverse notions that has influenced the era of not only 50s but also the 70s and 80s. Literature, art and music were American Postmodernist’s main communication way with the regular man and it was used to open people’s eyes on issues that concerned all Americans. Its emergence started with the post-war politics that enforced capitalism and technology’s rapid development. The more technology got involved with people’s daily life, the more people had lost their clear sense of identity as they developed virtual personas.
Postmodernists, who were left in the middle of war conflicts and system changes, had every right to be confused so they expressed their anxieties, fears and confusion through their art. Those who would later become a part of the counter culture were the Beats. They were vocal about sexual liberation, free speech, refusal of Christian ideals and the harms of industrialization and war politics. One of the prominent leaders of this generation was Allen Ginsberg and his use of language -especially in Howl- was so powerful that even though other members of the Beats were forgotten, he made his way to the 70s counter-culture generation. When Howl was first published in 1957, it caused a sensation because of Ginsberg’s use of vulgar language to touch on topics like madness, freedom and alienation from society.
In the 50s, mental health issues were seen as incurable thus this ignorance had led people to have bias against people who showed any bizarre behaviour. They were quick to label anyone who caused disorder in the society as ‘lunatic’ or ‘mad’. This is why Ginsberg opens his poem with the line “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” as a way of pointing to this issue. He doesn’t see hospitalized patients as mad because he experienced how being labeled as mad feels like. Seven months spent in a psychiatric institute doesn’t only pave the way for the creation of Howl, but he also meets with Carl Solomon whom he directly addresses to in Howl, including the first line. Meeting Solomon makes him realize how ‘the best minds’ of the era like artists such as himself are all locked up in hospitals so that the society can protect its own values and its people whom cause no such nuisance.
Solomon becomes the reason for Ginsberg to write Howl as he witnesses someone he perceives as genius endure so many mistreatments. In part III of Howl, he writes to Solomon who is still in “Rockland” and indicates that they have formed a friendship that is beyond the societal norms which condemned them both as insane and that the day where they’re both be freed from their labels will come. Part III, along with the first two, also shows the drug-induced hallucinations that could be causing him such “madness” that makes his work so intertextual. It makes Howl impossible to read without learning the background story of its lines because drugs blur the boundary between reality and vision so much that he lives in the celestial and uncanny scenes from Bible and has a vision of William Blake appearing to him. He explains his moment with Blake as an experience that reveals him the “interconnectedness of all existence,” but some interprets this as a way of Ginsberg to cope with his mental hardship. He can’t escape from the reality system had doomed him to face with so he takes drugs until his mind is so messed up to distinguish a vision from reality. The government of that time and the system they laid out are perhaps the sole reason of his state of “madness.”
Ginsberg became popular while conservative politicians were influential so he, too, experienced the repression of those who created art under their regime. Artists who went outside of the mainstream even just a little bit were immediately either shut down or sued. Ginsberg, too, was sued for the ‘obscenity’ that Howl contained in itself but it was mainly because the officials saw his acknowledge of the disorder in the society as threatening. He was not only fighting for free speech, but also claiming his rights as a queer man thus encouraging LGBTQ+ people to come to terms with their sexual identity. When he was confronted by The New York Post about homosexual themes in his works, he simply stated: “Because madam I’m queer. I sleep with men and women. I am neither queer nor not queer nor am I bisexual. My name is Allen Ginsberg and I sleep with whoever I want.”
The disorder in the society was him, his colleagues and many others in his generation that wasn’t afraid to speak their mind. Howl held a mirror to human suffering under the suppressed society because so many voices were left unheard due to the government’s policy of censorship and fear of the outcast. But he also did not ignore the consequences of not toning down the art they made as he expressed his concerns about how this repression against them led as far as to these individuals’ suicides. Therefore, he portrayed the system as vile and unwilling to cooperate with the new youth and praised the people in his writer circle for being brave to speak up.
Ginsberg was disappointed by the society and he did not hide his frustration. Howl’s Part II reveals his true feelings as he starts calling society “Moloch”; a “Canaanite deity associated in biblical sources with the practice of child sacrifice.” Later, the reader understands the reason why he prefers to use Moloch instead of society as he cries out his own facts. He realized that the society he grew up in and that casted him out for his refusal to adapt was no safe for anybody. This “Moloch” let capitalism become the new “normal” and the capitalist system paved the way for industrialization and more war policies. “Moloch” is not only about society but also the repression of McCarthyism and how it’s eagerness to involve in a war (ie. Korean War) actually sacrificed the children of American citizens. If that wasn’t enough, there were also the consequences of the rapid changes that were caused by industrialization. “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!” said Ginsberg, to describe how people had become a combination of human and machine, creating a new species that was called “Cyborgs”. As people became these Cyborgs to have a place in the new capitalist society, they also handed over their individuality as well as their privacy.
As well as this society’s wickedness on an individual aspect, Ginsberg also exposed the ironies that the system contained in itself. While the Beats were condemned and criminalized for their excessive use of drugs by the law, it was the same constitution that supported the sales of tobacco so its government and the capitalist corporations they worked with could profit from it. In Part I, he points out to these corruptions and to those “who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism”. All these problems lay out his personal difficult relationship with his country because even though he rejects capitalism and the new ‘modern’, he still has a big affection for his country and people. He finds the solution in alienating himself from “Moloch” as he does not want to be a part of the great terror the country’s practices have become.
Howl, after all, becomes successful as Ginsberg finds himself a place in the literature history as a postmodernist in a difficult time. His transparency in his own struggles as a LGBTQ+ person, drug use as a coping mechanism and decision to alienate from society is why he resonates with his audience. The way he tells his story is complex, intertextual and plural but yet, his passion to free other minds as well as his own is so powerful that his importance as a spiritual leader of postmodernism has not yet died out even decades after his death. Howl is about everything: suffering, sexual liberation, oppression, religion and that’s why there will be no time we don’t come across with this poem and Allen Ginsberg’s name when free expression is at risk.
