The Beats
Essay Preview: The Beats
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Conforming Opinions
In the early 1950s a few young writers started a movement that was carefree and rebellious, it was considered anti-establishment. These writers became known as the Beats or the Beat Generation. There were four men considered to be the original Beats, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. The person that came up with the term beat was Jack Kerouac, he said it in 1948 while talking to his friend Clellon Holmes. The exact words were: “So I guess you might say were a beat generation.” Holmes wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine, which he titled “The Beat Generation.” This article really got the term the Beats and its association with these writers out into the public eye. Two of the most integral books to come out of this literary movement were “Naked Lunch”, by William Burroughs and “On The Road”, by Jack Kerouac.
When you look at Naked Lunch you see a story of an addict and his journey from New York to Tangiers, then into the imaginary Interzone. The Interzone is this sort of hellish place where good and evil fight for control of all of humanity. If you look deeper into the book you see that it is really poking fun at American culture and society. The story is told from the perspective of a junkie and through him he looks at drugs and the social problem they have become. The perspective he gives is that addiction is not the problem but the way society reacts to addiction and addicts in general. He goes on to say that the drug bureaus created to stop these problems are really addicts as well cause they are feeding on all of this. The solution would be to save the junkie from his addiction and not punishing him for it. If there are no longer addicts there is no need for pushers.
The story starts out with the junkies journey from New York to Tangiers and his further decent into addiction. The book goes from the real world of this addict to a sort of satire fantasy world every so often. Then when he finally arrives in Tangiers it just turns into total fantasy. He is in this imaginary world known as Interzone, which is a modern city in which all the cities, peoples, and governments of the world are combined into a hub of commerce, sex, addiction, political manipulation, and rivalry. The Political leaders of Interzone are trying to rule the people through mental and physical control. This sort of thing is what he uses to satire the way the world runs. There are many conspiracy theories that believe a secret few conspire to control all. If you look at our world today and what is going on with the President and the few in power it is not so crazy of an idea.
In the book Burroughs creates something called the “Human Virus.” This is described, as something that lives on the human host and satisfies its needs for drugs, sex, or power in a sort of demonic possession. When addicted or as he says possessed by this the person becomes the virus and reverts to a lower life form. This sets up lots of the fantasy scenes that take place in the novel. Some examples of this would be when Bradley the Buyer is addicted to contact with junkies and becomes a man-eating monster. Another great one would be the talking asshole, about a man who is taken over by his bodily functions and becomes a big blob. Burroughs is doing these things to show how bureaucracies in society can be like viruses. This is all part of the brilliant satirical fantasy used throughout the novel.
In the Interzone there is a battle going on between good and evil for control of the human race. There are three parties involved in this, the Liquefactionists, the Divisionists, and the Senders. They are all trying to make everyone conform to an image of the people in control. The Liquefactionists are like the extreme right wing group who want to liquidate everyone but themselves. The Divisionists are more of the moderate group and they want to take over by flooding the world with clones of themselves. The Senders are on the left wing of things and they want to control everyone through mental telepathy. They are considered to be the worst of all evils in the novel. There is one group fighting against these three and they are the Factualist party. They represent a sort of individualism and they fight back against these groups by revealing the facts of what they are really doing. The problem with this is that they are only humans and they can become addicts. So nothing is ever solved and the battle goes on and on.
The character of Bill Lee is a writer and addict and is actually Burroughs using himself in the novel. He is a Factualist agent and he is fighting back against this evil the best way he knows how, with his words. This goes for the character in the novel and William Burroughs himself. So in the end the Naked Lunch is revealing facts through fiction and allowing people to see the truth clearly past all the bureaucracies.
In the novel “On the Road”, by Jack Kerouac we follow an aspiring writer named Salvatore Paradise and his friend Dean Moriarty. In the winter of 1947, the wild and happy Dean Moriarty recently out of jail and just married arrives in New York City, where he meets Sal Paradise and his intellectual group of friends. Sal is really fascinated by Dean and they spend three years on the road traveling the country. Sal has a bunch of misadventures as he hitchhikes and catches bus rides to Denver to meet up with Dean and some other friends. Then he ends up heading further west to California by himself and becomes a field worker for a while. Eventually Sal gets settled back in New York again only to have Dean show up and shake up his life again. They end up driving west again and have some crazy adventures on the way to Bull Lees place in New Orleans and then end up in San Francisco. That winter Sal goes to Dean and they go across the country towards New York becoming really close friends.. Dean ends up staying in New York for a while. That spring Sal goes to Denver alone but Dean eventually joins up with him and they take a trip all the way to Mexico City. With all this traveling we meet lots of interesting characters and big drama. Dean being the ladies man he is, ends up with three wives and four children in the three years of their journeys. Sal who starts out depressed gains happiness and confidence in his adventures and in the end finds love. In the end they have a lot more in common that they thought.
On the Road is a novel about characters more than anything else; they take center stage over any kind of real plot. The backdrops of the story add color and a sense of excitement but they