Beatniks: The New Ideology of Manifest Destiny and Freedom

The 1950s were a time of revitalization. They were a time of transition for the American people. World War II had ended and heralded the reinsertion and reintegration of thousands of service protrudegrowths into society. Working women who epitomized Rosie the Riveter and passed into the hands along with their 12 million counterparts working when the US entered the war, saved the m peerlessy they earned. Prior to the end of the war, at that place was non much to spend earned income on with the exception of war bonds. afterward, however, American industry grow like never before.The buying power offered to Americans expanded, as well. Goods that were not available during the war became readily accessible. This increase the job market and stimulated the economy. Not only that, but the returning soldiers helped the US experience a population boom helping to facilitate a spike in consumerism. Veterans were starting families and were in remove of housing which the Levitt family beg an and perfected, building housing areas c totallyed Levitt-towns. People were increasingly much materialisticshopping for wants and not vertical needs. It was genuinely the Fabulous Fifties.Out of this time was born(p) a generation of seeming radicals that fought against the agreed upon normality of the times. This pulse rate Generation reimagined the ideals of Manifest circumstances and freedom because they cherished to be free to explore what was considered alienation by many but for them was artistic expressiona breaking free of conformist beliefs of the suppositious American dream of materialism and gain. The Beat Generation or Beats, as they were sometimes called was a limit coined by the author and member of this same generation Jack Kerouac during a conversation with fellow writer, seat Clellon Holmes.He clarified his phrase by saying beat meant creation socially marginalized and exhausted beat downand blessedbeatific (Mid-1950s-1960s, 2007). The term implied t heir generation was beaten down for their artistic nature and universal deviance from mainstream behavior. Beatniks were labeled law breakers, troublemakers and rebel rousers and charged with cosmos communists. In fact, in 1961 the handler of the FBI, J. Edgar Hooer claimed that the beatnik lifestyle was in the top three major threats to American society and itinerary of life. Kerouac and early(a) fo to a lower places of the generation took offense to this accusation.Their insistence was they merely wanted to be free to explore what whitethorn have been considered absurdity but actually were searching for what they felt was missing in life. They were searching for a deeper meaning. They refused to be complacent on the button because the war had ended and the world was seemingly a better place. Things were not perfect just because the economy was on the rise. The war had not solved humanitys problems and consumerism was just an empty shell for them. Therefore, this search for a higher self, took the form of experimentation.Many of the Beats were openly transvestite or bisexual and freely experimented with their sexual natures. They aligned themselves with the culture of jazz medical specialtyians and the unison they do. Jazz music followed no preordained rules. There were no wrong notes no matter how raw. The more noisy and discordant, the better and more realemotionalit sounded. The Beats raged in their literary works and poetry, sounding much like discordant peals of music echoing from the saxophone of a jazz musician, against those who would suppress them. These odourings were elegantly detailed in the semi-mad ravings of Allen Ginsbergs poetry Howl.Like Ginsberg, many wrote under the influence of drugs like Benzedrine and marijuana, experimenting with them in order to achieve a state of transcendentalism. Gregory Stephenson (2009) explains it thusly, The poet, for a visionary instant, transcends the realm of the actual into the realm of the id eal, and then, unable to sustain the vision, returns to the realm of the actual. Afterwards the poet feels exiled from the eternal, the numinous, and the super conscious. The material world, the realm of the actual, seems empty and desolate. The desolation the Beats felt was born from the feeling of being out of sorts and disconnected with a world no longer theirs. This made them howl. They howled, they cried out, they wailed and fought against a forced subjugation. And thus, refusing to be subjugated, they were ostracized. Thereby, making them howl more and inspiring the title of Ginsbergs poem. In analyzing the poem, it is clear Ginsberg wanted to pass two things. First, he wanted to exact an unmistakable and distinct delineation between those who fall under the Beatnik category and those they feel are the conformists of their time.Secondly, he made it known that this was their declaration, it was their manifesto of freedom. I precept the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the sparkling dynamo in the machinery of nigh, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyes and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats aimless across the tops of cities contemplating jazz (1955).The material world Stephenson speaks of and the fix Ginsberg speaks of correlates to the Beats movement centered on a lifestyle of a total rejection of this mainstream idea that one and one must(prenominal) always exist two, one must always know when the right time is to settle down, what constitutes a productive member of society, a person must write and speak in formalities, have a certain religion, run what is acceptable and love who is acceptable in order to be accepted into society. They used alcohol and drugs to feel and then proceeded to write down what they felt, even if it was not in a formal order that made sense.Therefore, the academic community derided the Beats as anti-intellectual and unrefinedEstablished poets and novelists looked down upon the freewheeling forego of Beat literature (The Beat Generation, 2013). Furthermore, this freewheeling abandon applied to more than just the literature of the Beat movement, it applied to their psychical bodies, as well. American history was based on an idea of expansion, certify by a phrase coined in 1845 by editor, John OSullivan, called Manifest Destiny.Those that colonized in the newly founded America believed courageous pioneershad a divine obligation to stretch the boundaries of their noble country (Manifest Destiny, 2013). And yet in the 1950s these ideals America was founded on came to a screeching draw a blank despite the mass production and affordability of automobiles and the interconnectedness of cities by highways. People became complacent and began to settle down in Post-World War II newl y built homes in newly generated housing areas. The word of that era was conformity.The houses were all built to a certain style the yards were groomed in the same way the people behaved in a manner as what was expected of them. The idea of buying a home and being unmoving represented a large section of what the Beat Generation saw as conforming to a capitalist and consumer-based lifestyle. The Beats advocated a hobo type of lifestyle, rather than one weighed down by sensual possessions. These menwere attempting to escape what were perceived as the restrictive shackles of the nuclear family butrejected the trappings of a settled bourgeois lifestyle and were geographically mobile (McDowell, 1996).So the romanticism surrounding Jack Kerouacs autobiographical book On the pass, which spoke to those in this generation and missing to relate or infer them, also became the definition of the ideology of the Beat Generation. An ideology which said Life should be actively lived and you mu st make of it what you want, not what others tell you to want to make out of it. It was about grabbing and doing it. It was about not wanting to stay somewhere and rooting, but rather going somewhere and making your own reality (American Road, 2011).Kerouac epitomized this in his book I left with my canvas bag in which a a few(prenominal) fundamental things were packed and took off for the Pacific Ocean with the fifty dollars in my pocket. Id been poring over maps of the United States in Paterson for months, even reading books about the pioneers and savoring names like Platte and Cimarron and so on, and the road-map was one long red line called Route 6Ill just stay on 6I said to myself and confidently startedFilled with dreams of what Id do in Chicago, in Denver, and then finally in San Fran,I started hitching up the thing (Kerouac, 1957).He wondered and daydreamed about what he would do in those cities, but knew what he did not want to do. Kerouacs character, Sal, did not want to miss out on anything by becoming deadened, which is silently implied, had he joined the rat race and gotten a job. It was waste energy. He hated the thought of itThere were so many other interesting things to do and meet (Kerouac, 1957). The ideals substantiate in his book through his characters were an open and honest free love of people, an enjoyment of the experiences that were happening in the now, and a meeting of the minds of ll types and races of people. They were colorblind. And this was also new in a time when people who were different were excluded or called communists. In a time when Joseph McCarthy was initiating a Red Scare and accusing citizens of being communists and Hoovers G-Men were illegally wire-tapping politicians and regular citizens alike, people had become overly suspicious of everyone. People were anxious to show militarism and an acquiescence to conform to what was inherently American. Yet, in spite of this, Beatniks marched to their own poetry and belie fs.Ginsberg howled and Kerouac left on a holy trek to find a true inner consciousness, laden with real freedom and authentic spontaneity. Several times, Sals character considered traveling elsewhere instead of his intended destination for no other reason than to see where the roads would take him or what or who would lie in that particular direction. though most, if not all, those in this beat generation originally came from a middle class background, they rejected it as being conformists and closed minded. Conformity to them was born from fear of the political system (American Road, 2011).They were not afraid though they felt this overt obsession with conforming to an evil government and material possessions was cleansing the spirit and creativity found within. This idea was further cemented by Ginsberg statement of the best minds of his generation being destroyed. In the second part of Howl, Ginsberg continually mentions the name or entity Moloch and in the context he uses it, o ne can ascribe a negative connotation to it What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch Solitude Filth Ugliness Ashcans and unobtainable dollarsMoloch the heavy judger of men Moloch the incomprehensible prison Moloch the crossbone insensitive jailhouse and Congress of sorrows Moloch whose buildings are judgment Moloch the cast stone of war Moloch the stunned governments (Ginsberg, 1957) This entity Moloch no enquiry represents all the things in American society considered to be the norm, but for the Beat Generation is stifling and oppressive.cementum and aluminum were the utensils builders used to build homes like Levitt-towns and universities that inhibited free thinking and self-expression. He mentions unobtainable dollars because the pursuit of money and material possessions was a fleeting happiness. Once possessed, it is no longer desired. And everywhere they turned on that point was heavy judgment, except from their own kind. The publishing and almost instant success of Jack Kerouacs book, On the Road, as well as the publishing of other Beat writers, like Allen Ginsberg, marked the beginnings of an evolutionary change.The Beat Generation became a subculture that truly impacted America. Men and womenteenagers and young adults, were finding themselves increasingly disillusioned by a lifestyle that was centered on home and work. People were taking a page from Kerouacs life and hitting the road on a journey to find themselves and what meaning life really had for them. They were taking verses from Ginsbergs manifesto and biting detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no nuisance but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication (1957). Indeed, the Fabulous 50s brought with it trials and tribulations, materialism and consumerism, and in general, the earmarks of an American social way of being that is still prevalent today. But within that culture, a co unterculture was also born whose inhabitants were not satisfied with the world as it was. They were not satisfied with what the world wanted to turn them into. They wanted to march to the beat of their own drum to experience what was out there in the world and truly be liberated.Born of this desire was the Beat Generation, the forebears of the hippies of the 1960s. They advocated a freedom and liberation of minds and bodies. They wanted to be liberated of all censor. They wanted the freedom to love hard and fast, to travel at will and depopulate the idea that in order to be truly happy one had to engage in a rat race of empty labor for money and material possessions. The Beatniks reinforced and reimagined the ideals of Manifest Destiny and chose to manifest their destiny of finding the freedom to be themselves and love it despite opposition.ReferencesFilms Media Group (2011). American Road H.264. Retrieved from http//digital.film-s.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?aid=18596&xtid=48260 Gins berg, A. (1955-1956). Howl. Collected Poems, 1947-1980. Retrieved from http//www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381 McDowell, L. (1996). Off the Road Alternate Views of Rebellion, Resistance and The Beats. Retrieved from http//www.jstor.org/stable/622491 Stephenson, G. (2009). dayspring Boys Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation.