La revolucion de los beats en "howl" de ginsberg

Discuss the different forms of rebellion and social criticism typical of the Beat generation in any text by Allan Ginsberg.

Allan Ginsberg, one of the best known artists of the Beat Generation, rebelled against what he believed was hypocritical about the American society. The United States claimed to be the most dominant and progressive nation, yet Ginsberg saw nothing but injustice and abusein the most dominant institutions. In his most famous poem, “Howl”, Ginsberg does not only raise the main problems of society, detailing how the Beat Generation was outcast and persecuted for being different, but also suggests salvation lies on it.
The Beats, who obtained their name from the jazz´s particular unstructured rhythm (“beat”) and from the reputation of verbally attacking the system,were against the main principles that inspired the American way of life. During the 1940s and 1950s, a fever of patriotism emerged in every American family. These decades were characterized by an extreme fervor regarding the Second World War and America´s victory. After the war ended, this was shown in two main phenomena, the “baby boom” and a massive urbanization. People were dazzled with theidea of living in big cities and a prosperous economic situation motivated them to have children, to buy new things, and mostly, to believe in and love their country.
Ginsberg calls his mates “the best minds of his generation” for not following the insensible and false domestic, militaristic, unthinking patriotism that was built in society at the time. They saw themselves in the position of havingto choose between following their artistic nature and giving up their souls to the hypocritical capitalism society. Their minds were not captured by America’s hegemonic culture; they were able to “think for themselves”, not living to other people´s expectations but for their own art. Because of this they were rejected and considered to be insane, and were not taken seriously. They were evenexpelled from universities for “crazy and publishing obscene odes”, that is, for not supporting the dominant interpretations of culture and art, for not creating wealth, industry and war like all the others did. Being outcast and persecuted for their inability to accept the models of normality and conformity imposed on them, was what “drove them mad” and devastated them (“destroyed by madness”). Inaddition, Ginsberg and his friends were repeatedly treated unjustly by the police and other authorities [“who (...) shrieked with delight in police cars for committing no crime”], which was, according to him, what drove them into an underground world of drug abuse, violence and sexual deviation (“with drugs, walking nightmare, alcohol and cock and endless balls”).
The Beat Generation also accused areality of the United States in which the nation’s values were misplaced and were a clear proof of its hypocrisy. While it claimed to be the most advanced society, Ginsberg believed the government only aimed to advance its militaristic conquests, literally leaving some of its people starving and poor (“children screaming under the stairways”, “old men weeping in the parks”, “poverty”). People werefooled by the untrue shallow reality shown by the media, which hid the countries actual problems regarding the war. This created an illusion in people´s minds of what war was like (“shrikes of the fairies of advertising and the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors”), brainwashing them into an unjustified patriotism (“accusing the radio of hypnotism”). They accused the society of beinghypocritical for somehow being more comfortable believing the media instead of seeing the reality in front of its eyes. The war topic is touched in a very subtle manner inside the poem, by the use of belic language such as “scholars of war”, “a lost battalion”, “pacifist eyes”, “Los Alamos” (national laboratory where the atomic bomb was built), “monstrous bombs”, “hydrogen jukebox” and “armies”....