Howl

“Howl” comprises 4 parts. Part 1 is the longest, containing 78 wordy lines detailing the destruction of Ginsberg’s circle of friends. Line 1 describes these doomed individuals as “the best minds of my generation” (Line 1): Ginsberg qualifies this description by listing “who” he is referencing, including those “hallucinating / Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy […]” (Line 6), those “who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine […]” (Line 10), those “who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully […]” (Line 55), those “who scribbled all night rocking and rolling […]” (Line 51), those “who let themselves be f***** in the ass […]” (Line 36), those “who copulated ecstatic and insatiate […]” (Line 41), those “who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong [sic] & amnesia” (Line 67), and many others. These quotations define a bulk of the poem’s subjects. Line 6, for instance, mentions hallucinating, which references the Beat poets’ fervor for visionary, hallucinatory “truth.” The line also references Ginsberg’s own vision of William Blake, a major event in which Ginsberg found his poetic drive and his focus for parsing out the visionary in everyday life. These visions connect to Line 10, where people “ate fire” or “drank turpentine.” Ginsberg describes drug users here; drug use was a large part of the creative process for Beat poets, and drugs like morphine, marijuana, peyote, ayahuasca, and benzedrine fueled sexual and creative breakthroughs.

The cut wrists in Line 55 address suicide and suicide attempts, while Line 67 references those with mental illness. Line 51 refers to poets and writers “scribbl[ing] all night.” Lines 36 and 41 both refer to sexuality and sexual activity; Line 51 describes gay love and both Lines 51 and Line 41 describe casual sex and open relationships. In these lines, Ginsberg catalogues people on the fringes of society—the poets, lovers, thinkers, mentally ill, and religious minds who didn’t fit into the clean, crisp status quo of the 1950s America in which he wrote “Howl.” Among other things, in the 1950s Ginsberg fought against capitalism, the Vietnam War (which began in 1955), traditional views on love and sex, and the “stuffiness” of New Criticism. Ginsberg’s circle envisioned a new, freer US and a new way of writing. They sought self-expression and sexual expression; “Howl” laments the destruction of these believers and their vision, but by its end, it also establishes that the soul can prevail as it is eternal and holy.

Part 1 utilizes a literary device known as cataloguing. The catalogue, or list, describes “who” these “best minds” are, and what these individuals did (or what was done to them). Nearly every line in Part 1 begins with “who.” This repetition at the beginning of verses, called anaphora, creates a chantlike flow—an incantation to place and memory. The lines, though long, read best (and as Ginsberg intended) when spoken out loud and in the space of one breath, thus contributing to their chantlike nature. The feeling of reading the poem resembles Ginsberg’s frenzied state while writing it, connecting reader and author in a communal intimacy touted by the Beats. Ginsberg also found a mental-physical connection in breathwork that opened doors to greater truths, so reading the poem’s long lines in one breath is an intentional method for tapping into the spiritual, as well.

There’s a prevailing sense of doom—prophetic doom—in “Howl”: Some critics draw comparisons to T.S. Eliot’s equally prophetic and dystopian “The Waste Land.” And just like “The Waste Land,” there’s enough religious imagery and transformative power by the end of Ginsberg’s poem to supplant the initial feeling of doom with hope. Ginsberg also names his doom. While Part 1 explains who the “best minds” are and what happened to them, Part 2 answers “why” these people suffered: because of Moloch. Ginsberg anaphorically uses the name Moloch throughout Part 2, thus giving the ominous sounding word an even more negative connotation through its omnipresence. He emphasizes this sinister omnipresence by using exclamation marks with the word “Moloch.”

Moloch appears numerous times in the Christian Old Testament as a Canaanite false god that demanded human sacrifice. Followers sacrificed their children to Moloch by throwing them into fire. Ginsberg, who liberally approached religion and spirituality and sought answers throughout his life from a variety of religious gurus/viewpoints, had a vision of Moloch while on drugs one night. In his vision, Moloch’s face appeared over cities and streets—Moloch literally grafted onto whatever Ginsberg saw, becoming the face of capitalism and everything else evil in America. In Part 1, people suffer; in Part 2, Ginsberg reveals that these people were sacrifices to Moloch (aka American capitalism). Part 1 also foreshadows this revelation with fiery imagery: there are people “crowned with flame” (Line 50) and “burned alive” (Line 56), people “who disappeared into the volcanoes […] leaving behind nothing but […] the lava and ash of poetry […] in fireplace Chicago” (Line 29). Ginsberg also mentions “firetrucks” (Line 57) and “angelheaded hipsters burning” (Line 3), adding to the imagery of fire, calamity, and sacrifice that foreshadow Part 2.

Part 2 (Lines 79-93) doubles down on Part 1’s fiery images with images of cold-hearted destruction, such as “Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars!” (Line 80), “Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch!” (Line 81), and “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!” (Line 83). Moloch is both a mental and physical prison, an arrested state with which American capitalism and its fixation on money and uniformity destroys individual will. Moloch also represents the status quo, as glimpsed in Line 81 when Ginsberg accuses Moloch of being both “loveless” and “mental.” Moloch destroys gay love, or any form of love that exists outside heteronormativity. Moloch also pollutes the mind, causing mental illness and, for many, an unhealthy desire to conform. This includes people like Carl Solomon—who wanted to be “fixed” and “whole” but who found themselves in and out of institutions; people like Ginsberg’s mother, whose lobotomy was authorized by Ginsberg (her doctors recommended it, and Ginsberg felt haunted by his choice for much of his life). Ginsberg even tried to “go straight,” until he sought help from a therapist and finally embraced his sexual orientation. Moloch wears people down; Moloch destroys the mind and the soul.

Ginsberg ends Part 2 by equating himself and his friends to wise, “mad” men. This comparison invokes the archetypal fool and the wise old fool—the character tropes of old who appeared troubled or unsound but who, perhaps because of how wise they truly were, divined the meaning of life far more easily than those fooled by life’s rat race. Ginsberg says, “Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! The holy yells!” (Line 93) as his friends throw themselves into a river. These lines underscore Ginsberg’s place as a prophet-poet while also showing how his generation would rather die than continue serving the false god of American capitalism and the soul-death it entails.

After Part 2’s dramatic ending, Part 3 takes on new meaning and urgency. While Part 1’s anger and depictions of doom and gloom serve to answer who (the best minds), how (destroyed by sacrifice), and where (all over America), and while Part 2’s aggression explains why (for the cold glory of a false god, Moloch/capitalism), Part 3 shows Ginsberg’s solidarity not only to Carl Solomon but to all his friends and lovers who struggle against the status quo. Though short, Part 3 (Lines 94-131) offers hope—even in the face of destruction. Ginsberg repeats the phrase “I’m with you in Rockland” in every line, meaning he’s with Solomon both in mind and spirit in the Rockland mental hospital near New York City. Ginsberg again employs anaphora by using “where” to begin nearly every other line. As Part 3 unfolds, Ginsberg likens Solomon to both himself (“where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter” (Line 105)) and his mother’s schizophrenia (“where you imitate the shade of my mother” (Line 99)). But the lines soon take a visionary approach when Ginsberg defiantly proclaims that the physical cannot subdue the spiritual: “I’m with you in Rockland / where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void” (Lines 118-19). Part 3 reaches its finale with images of Christ, revolution, freedom, and a journey. Solomon traverses an ocean to find Ginsberg in a cottage; the two men, having endured hatred, greed, government-sanctioned violence, and sacrifice—like the Christ figure Ginsberg invokes—enjoy a rebirth filled with peace, quiet, and togetherness while walking along the shore.

“Footnote for Howl,” or Part 4, uses anaphora to triumphantly announce the holiness within all things by repeating “Holy!” throughout the section. Ginsberg laments the destruction of his friends and family in Parts 1-3, but he triumphantly proclaims here in Part 4 that, regardless of governing forces and the destruction inherent in capitalism degrading humanity, human beings are inherently holy. Ginsberg lists sexual organs, marijuana, trains, and jazz among his list of holy things, thus extending holiness to the things that drive people—both literally and figuratively—in search for meaning. Part 4 also adds emphasis to the verse in Part 3 which states that heaven “[…] exists and is everywhere about us!” (Line 89). Ginsberg hits home just how much capitalism tricks people into searching for heaven through backbreaking sacrifice when, in reality, heaven and holiness exists within and all around human beings.