Close Reading and Textual Analysis of the Poem 'America' by Allen Ginsberg - Essay Example

Topic:  Close reading and textual analysis of the poem America by Allen Ginsberg. There is no doubt that Allen Ginsberg’s poem “America” is the most striking and eye-catching poems that have tackled America in a very clear and straightforward way. The poem as a whole touches on many aspects of American history so long as Ginsberg himself criticizes openly all the issues related to America during the late forties and fifties.  Therefore, most of the problems he thought of concerned mainly the cold war, ego-centrism, McCarthyism, homosexuality and America’s sense of consumerism. In this essay, I shall spot the light on this poem and see how the linguistic and stylistic devices reflect the whole message Ginsberg wants to convey to the Anglophone readership. From the very beginning, Ginsberg seems not to be satisfied with the American life at all; he is blaming America for not granting him any recompense. Even worse, he summarizes the country of Uncle Sam into two dollars and twenty-seven cents. That’s all what it means for him. This is clearly shown in “America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956. I can’t stand my own mind.” What is more is that he is grumbling that he is not allowed to speak and freely articulate his thoughts. To illustrate, “I’m sick of your insane demands” denotes that he is being forced to be someone who is not and that he will never tolerate that.  By this, He sets forth that American people were more capable of expressing their opinions in the twenties and thirties than they were in the forties and fifties.  On behalf of the Beat Generation, Ginsberg bravely speaks in the poem and alludes to the sort of repression exercised by McCarthyism, a political strategy through which fear was inculcated into the minds of the American people by the 1950s. As the poem unfolds, Ginsberg launches a severe critique on the American regime since they lead neither to his inward peace nor to his redemption. In this respect, he says, “America when will we end the human war. Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don’t feel good don’t bother me.” Remarkable of Ginsberg is that he raises many problematic issues and difficult questions for which he could find no healing and plausible answer. In so doing, he strives to persuade the Americans that even though he says “No” to America, he is still to be conceived a pure American, a noble saint that has renounced the world hankering after self satisfaction and comfort. “Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument.” In a very sarcastic tone, Ginsberg mocks the American man and the way the government toys with his emotions via some national magazines like Time Magazine. “I’m addressing you. Are you going to let our national life be run by Time Magazine? I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week.” Confessedly, one can note that the poet seems to be in a chaotic mood and, hence the vibrating feelings predominating the poem. “I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mood…America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?” According to Ginsberg’s poem, in order to be a true American, one must be white, heterosexual, own a car and earned a very good and esteemed living. However, his problem is that he seems to hide his sexual orientation, for homosexuals and communists were rejected from the American society. The following line clearly demonstrates this claim: “I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.” Consequently, the poet kept his sexual orientation a secret because he knew in advance that other people would not accept him owing to the existence of homophobia. The poet seems even so tired of keeping his homosexuality as a secret: “America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel”. This implies that irrespective of the kind of attitudes, values and beliefs which he firmly holds, the poet must be accepted within the American society and should be perceived as an American citizen. In point of fact, when we give a glance at the poem, we find that it looks like a long lyric, an ode wherein dictions are well chosen by the poet and are arranged in such a very careful way to convince the American readership of a particular point of view. It is indeed a very powerful poem that is borrowed from a life experience underwent by the poet. The form of the poem symbolizes the content of the poem and is of course integral to it. To put this differently, if we remove the form of the poem, we will definitely weaken and destroy the whole poem. Furthermore, the arrangement of words and letters create a clear image in the minds of readers, meanwhile offering them a specific meaning visually. The emptiness and the white space introduced between the stanzas is not to be taken for granted; rather, it constitutes an essential part of the poem and can serve as an appetizer for the poet from the heavy burdens that befell on him. With respect to poetic devices, we can say that the poet draws on alliteration like in “America when will we end the human war?” and “I haven’t got a Chinaman’s chance”. There is also consonance like in “When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.” The poet also repeats certain words and phrases in order to put much emphasis on what he said. For example, “Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russias power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.” When we scrutinize the poem, we also find that the poet deploys and employs personification as a poetic device in order to cast his anger at America. The following lines suggest the sad mood of the poet and the kind of revolution he waged against his home country. “America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? None can deny that clothes, grave and tears are things that are exclusive to Man, yet they are subsumed into the poem to render it more concrete and intelligible even to the common reader. Frankly, we feel as if the poet is addressing another person devoid of moral values and tenets, a despot who is much preoccupied with the accumulation of glories and engaged in bloodshed. As for imagery, it is obvious that the poet can not do without it because it not only facilitates understanding for the reader but endows him/her with a scope for interpreting the poem in a very optimal way as well. In this connexion, it seems relevant to declare that the poet reduces the American society to a mere object involved in many consuming habits. “America…I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.” He is even comparing American children, who might also be soldiers, to eggs and, this by no means, evokes in the reader many feelings oscillating between laughter and depression: “America when will you send your eggs to India.” Thus, similes and metaphors are recurrent throughout the whole poem. In brief, Ginsberg’s poem “America” should not be looked at from a very narrow angle because the poet’s message is to rebuild and reconstruct a new American land wherein the views and values of individuals are respected. If this dream seems unfeasible in reality, then the whole poem makes it possible because it takes the reader into a long voyage to perceive the couple of mistakes America did commit once and to give it a room for reconsidering the past in order to step towards the future in entire safety and security. Read More