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"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg 610_ginsberg_about - Coggle Diagram
"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg 
Part 2
"Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river"
Moloch is the destroyer of their realities and like you said they used drugs in order to see the world more clearer. .
"Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!"
This in my opinion is to refer to how government is his Moloch and that takes so much. A lot of them were incarcerated because of laws that legislative passed.
"They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!"
This I think refers to the fact that we try so hard to look for happiness but in his opinion happiness or AKA "heaven" is around us but we have been blindfolded to that fact by Moloch
"Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!"
Suicide was a common thing in the beats to escape from the harsh realities of the strict world around them
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Part 1 "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness"
" rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio"
From supplemenatry reading:
"the Beats integrated rhythms found in jazz clubs with invocations of Eastern religions and Buddhist chants."
"underground music styles like jazz were especially evocative for Beat writers, while threatening and sinister to the establishment."
"who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,"
referring to his friends who had to escape the US and seek peace else where
Discussion question : In the supplementary text it states, “Despite their anti-establishment and anti-academy pretentions, the Beats were all well-educated and generally from middle class backgrounds.” How does knowing this change your perspective of their protest to society compared to racial and gender inequality we have studied in previous text?
Shams made the comment: I though it was very interesting learning in the contextual reading that they were predominantly anti feminist as well. I think what they brought forth into literature was a great stepping stone bit it really amazed me that with such open minds they could not comprehend that their work coukd not be complete without the voices of women or even the poor. It did make me think less of the work but then ai thought just because you don’t live an experience does not mean you cannot write about it, It seems that they tried to immerse themselves in the experiences they wrote about as much as possible.
In response to that I think it is so weird that they seem so isolated. Like I totally get everyone struggles and struggle is struggle but it just seems odd that this group seems very cliquish but I think really it laid the path for protest since white men were showing protest and so it helped normalize it
"who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,"
"who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,"
I think that this comment talks about how controversial their ideas were especially at a time where everything was so cookie cutter.
Part 3 Dedicated to Carl Solomon
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" where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha"
I am like vaguely understanding what he means here but when I am looking it up it seems like they focus more on the fascist part and yes I think that is a big part but I just think its funny he uses the term "Hebrew socialist revolution" and Golgotha which is where Jesus was crucified. So in a way is he saying how he will bring about change to a group of people who actively rejected a "Savior". It's hard to put into words but you have to take off your "Christian" lens and understand that they're not tiptoeing around fragile Christians' so I think there is there is some nuance here.
"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 think there was some romance between the two because of this comment
" 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"
Reference to war were not uncommon as this was after the second world war and the US was involved in a lot of military operations. I think the nation as a whole was still processing that.
Writing style
“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg (1956): Perhaps the most famous text of the Beat movement, Ginsberg’s “Howl” is an epic fever dream that documents the experience of people living in the United States. It features critiques of American injustices through surreal and terrifying imagery.”
In the TA she talked about how it should be read fast and in a long breath. How it should be read getting louder and that he meant for this to be read at rallies
The text mentions peyote which is " a small, spineless cactus, Lophophora williamsii, whose principal active ingredient is the hallucinogen mescaline. " so this text is left to some imagination and visualization in order to under how psychdelic Ginsberg was
In my opinion though I think a lot of this writing is shrouded in a double meaning but very vulgar I think the point of it is not to draw a certain thought but really to draw upon a certain feeling. Like I may not be able to understand all the references but the raw emotion is still there and its actually really inspiring that he can do that and I think about how I can incorporate that type of writing in my persuasive writing.
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