"Howl" and when will we be there?

Trying to get to the next level is not always an easy task. For Allen Ginsberg and his friends, “Howl” is the next level. With an examination into the lives of Ginsberg and his friends, “Howl” shows the constant battle in the minds of these people, trying to reach the next level, the level of knowing.

“Howl” shows the struggling minds of Ginsberg and his friends and how the world is a constant pressure, weighing them down, making them suffer, trying to reject their inner artistic minds. Ginsberg examines the ways in which society tries to repress their individualities and how they strive to reach the next level.

For them, it is all about transcendence. They are constantly trying to achieve their optimum level of all knowing power. With the help of hallucinogenic drugs, Ginsberg and his friends are able to reach, for them, the level of knowing all. Through reaching this point, they are able to see how the world is trying to continually suppress them, and to keep them as a fixed point in society, one that fits in with the rest and does not question everything.

The point in transcendence is to question everything. Ginsberg does this through “Howl,” finally reaching a point of acknowledgement in which he realizes the world and society do not want him in a level of all knowing power. In part II of “Howl,” Ginsberg describes Moloch, the ancient God in which children were used as sacrifices. Moloch, for Ginsberg and his friends, is the societal pressure to conform as well as the pressure to sacrifice their individualities to society. They are forced to face Moloch, standing up to Moloch, to try to reach past Moloch and transcend beyond it to reach their level of satisfaction in life.

By part III of “Howl,” Ginsberg shifts back to Carl Solomon, to whom the poem was written for. He repeatedly tells Carl that he is with him in Rockland. This is an expression of how close Ginsberg and all of his friends were. If one of them is suffering from the tortures of Moloch, the others are with them. It does not matter to them if one is considered mad, for they are all mad in some sense. They have all lost something along their journey.

The last two sections of “Howl” seem to wrap up the idea of transcendence in that Ginsberg brings the poem full circle. Starting with dedicating “Howl” to Carl Solomon, Ginsberg traces the steps of his friends and himself, through the streets and city to face Moloch, back to Carl Solomon, saying that he is with him forever, wherever he is in life. He is with Carl no matter what. They are all with him. They have all faced the world, intoxicated, looking for the passage to an all-knowing mind, have felt the pressures of Moloch, have repressed the urge to conform to society. They have all been searching for one thing, transcendence. Using hallucinogenic drugs to reach this level, for some, is the correct path. They have achieved a “higher” level of understanding, searching past what they know to seek what they believe to be the truth. This “higher” level search that they have been on is “Howl.” The journey is the important thing.