This paper discusses Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”, and William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch as examples of the literary, 1950s Beat Generation.
This paper explains that Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were the galvanizing forces behind the Beat Generation; their writings and revolutionary narrative techniques created a national sensation that is still debated in modern literary circles. The author points out that Kerouac’s “On the Road”, the most respected work of the group, at first glance seems incoherent; but, as the novel progresses, we discover the story moves from a superficial sense of order to a deeper, more penetrating sense of openness. The paper relates that “Howl” is not the work of an angry young man; Ginsberg emerges from this rather long poem as a rancorous and somewhat gloomy mystic seer as opposed to a deferential and conventional kind of person that had symbolized the youth of the post-WWII period.
“The sex that is virtually dominant in the world of “Naked Lunch” appears to reflect the sex that Freud revealed as the ultimate cause, means, and end. Anything goes in Interzone, and the sex is there in all varieties and expressions. However, it is “junk” which sufficiently separates the narrator from the group consciousness to let him have this vision of things as they are. Junk has its literal importance as a stimulus, but it is also important as a symbol. In general, it is a symbol of meaninglessness, or life as the be-all and end-all of an evolving world. Only be coming into ultimate contact with junk, by knowing it as a symbol, one can realize the separate life.”