On Allen Ginsbergs Howl - Book Report/Review Example

? On Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ Table of Contents I. Introduction 3 II. Discussion 3 III. Conclusion 6 Works Cited 7 I. Introduction Allen Ginsberg was a poet of the immediate, and his lesson, if there is one, is that there is a kind of rapture to be had from being completely present in the moment, from crying out in a primal but perceptive and intelligent way about the sanctity of personality and human freedom in the face of oppressive social and political forces. Thoughts are linear and always old, but one’s immediate perception, when allowed to get in with no filters from that other, more worldly function of thinking, yields surprising insights into the reality that undergirds the nature of things. Man is beautiful and his instincts are to be trusted fully. His very reality is beautiful, and he invites us to participate in that perception of beauty through the poem. This paper explores this vision of reality while also answering specific questions relating to the poem itself. The first question is about the significance of Moloch in the poem. The second question relates to the meaning of Ginsberg’s ecstatic pronouncement at the end of the poem that everything is holy. The third question is with regard to the identity of Carl Solomon. (Ginsberg; Burt; Wallace; Poem Hunter). II. Discussion In answer to the first question of the identity of Moloch, we get that this is the name that Ginsberg gives to the enemy of the individual, which is none other than the social order of the time, with its mores and its conventionality, and its deadly and aggressively hostile disposition towards those who are different and who are unable to fit into the conventional mold. Moloch it is which is the personification of that social force which would, in the end, claim the independence, the genius and the life of his beloved Carl Solomon. Viewed in this way, we see Ginsberg depict Moloch as a machine, as something repressive and ugly, as something despicable, the enemy (Ginsberg; Burt): Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! …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! (Ginsberg) In answer to the second question, Ginsberg declares everything as holy in the ‘Footnote to Howl’. Here we are made to understand that everything that Moloch tried to repress, including Solomon, is worthy of respect, and is worthy of that space that we reserve for the holiest things in our lives, worthy of worship. This is a howl against the very opposite regard that Moloch has for everything that Ginsberg considered holy (Ginsberg (b)): Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels! Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas! Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums! (Ginsberg (b)) In answer to the third question, the most immediate answer is that it was to him that Ginsberg dedicated the poem, and the whole of the third and final section of ‘Howl’ is addressed directly to the man. We get intimations of the kind of place Rockland is from the sad fate that met Solomon there, and from the length and intensity of his address to the man we get that Ginsberg’s relationship with Solomon is intense and pivotal to the understanding of the whole poem. In a way one can say that the poem is a kind of howl, a painful shout, at the fate of his friend Solomon (Ginsberg): I’m with you in Rockland    where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep I’m with you in Rockland    where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself    imaginary walls collapse    O skinny legions run outside    O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here    O victory forget your underwear we’re free (Ginsberg). A look at his biography gives context to the intensity of Ginsberg’s howl for Solomon. They were together at the Columbia Psychiatric Institute as patients in 1949, and we are made to understand that the relationship was pivotal to the development of Ginsberg’s poetic vision. From Solomon Ginsberg was exposed to Dada and surrealism, and to experimentation in art, and in a way the sad fate that met Solomon in that institute mirrors the kind of oppressive forces that curtail the blossoming of artistic genius. Solomon was an artist whose art and whose genius were repressed by the establishment. It is in this context that a certain tragic interpretation of Howl can be gleaned as well (Bookrags). What Solomon’s fate reveals, we are able to glean, is that people who are passionate, who are different, who defy conventions, and who dare to live out an out of tangent artistic vision, out of tangent with the rest of conventional society, are suppressed, curtailed, branded as crazy, and locked away to die in mental institutions. Howl is a cry against all this and an affirmation of the sanctity of the artistic life and vision of Solomon, viewed in this way (Ginsberg; Bookrags; Burt). III. Conclusion An investigation into the meaning of holy and the identities of Carl Solomon and Moloch yields deep insights into the meaning of Howl and the artistic intent of Ginsberg. We see that Solomon is the very personification of the personality and the human force that Moloch, American society, repressed and crushed to death. We see Ginsberg’s howl as an affirmation that everything that stood in the fringe, Solomon, his mother, and his friends, as well as his very artistic vision, is holy (Ginsberg; Ginsberg (b); Burt). Works Cited Bookrags. “Carl Solomon Biography”. Bookrags.com. 2006. Web. 15 October 2013. Burt, Stephen. “The Paradox of Howl”. Slate.com. 19 April 2006. Web. 15 October 2013. < http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2006/04/the_paradox_of_howl.html> Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl”. Poetry Foundation. 2013. Web. 15 October 2013. Ginsberg, Allen (b). “Footnote to Howl”. Poetry Foundation. 2013. Web. 15 October 2013. < http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/240700> Poem Hunter. “Biography of Allen Ginsberg”. PoemHunter.com. 2013. Web. 15 October 2013. Wallace, Wyndham. “The Joy Of Text: Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' Comes To The Big Screen”. The Quietus. 21 July 2010. Web. 15 October 2013. Read More