In the end

Now that we have come to the end of our journey, I realize I’ve learned a lot from the Beat Generation and its writers and poets. Not only did men write brilliant pieces of art but women also wrote about their view. Looking back into history is very important because we are only human and make mistakes, meaning that history has repeated itself from our ignorance. I’ve learned that in the fifties it was alright to hitchhike because it was right after the Great Depression when hobos would roam around for jobs and jump trains to get across the country. I have a serious passion for traveling and can’t wait to go out on the road just as Kerouac did. But times have changed and there are different factors, the freedom of trusting strangers is dead as well as writing freely. Anyone can write obscenities but only somebody can write something from the heart and truly be heard even through its obscenities. Nowadays people can ramble on about sex and drugs but in those days it was a movement, there was a cause. Disrespect from the law enabled the Beatniks to form and join the union of “I’m sick and tired of the old customs holding me down.” It was all exciting because it had never really been done, except for in the twenties and that was thirty years earlier. This was a movement of not only writing but expression. These jazz cats talked about everything everyone else was scared to talk about, which is why the hippies came about, why there is good music, and why we can talk about whatever we want in 2008. I’m really happy with all the books I read because I loved them all. So in the end people can know that “art is love is god” as William Berman said and we have the freedom to say whatever we feel.

Woman Rule

Men in the Beat Generation felt as if they could cheat on their wives and girlfriends, many of the woman were muses but had their own talents. Some woman were proud to have inspired the Beatnik men and get no fame from it. Some were content writers on their own who also had their own generation, on page 103 Eileen Kaufman explains, "I knew all the beat writers and artists...it was a joyful time of communication with kindred souls that only was extended when the hippie movement came in. We were precursors of that community, and we were happy to have influenced their loving feeling." I feel as if woman could have been more inspiring but it just wasn't as widely known, although all the members though small, contributed to the Beat Generation. The book contains forty members of woman some artists some poets and how they inspired other woman.

Woman catch the Beat

The last book I started reading was the view of the Beat Generation through the eyes of woman. The muses weren't just behind the scenes but stood for something maybe even more powerful than what the men stood for. With woman empowerment came the end of men chivalry but was it worth it? They drank smoked and wrote just as well as any of the men but weren't acknowledged to a degree. In Women of the Beat Generation by Brenda knight the reader gets a clear visual of the free spirit women were during this generation. Knight writes, "I knew woman living secret or double lives because love and sexual desire for another woman was anathema." (page 5) These woman stood for many things just as Kerouac and Ginsberg, the were great poets and should also get recognition for their free thinking.

Lose lose situation

"The Pusher always gets it all back. The addict needs more and more junk to maintain a human form...buy off the Monkey. Junk is the mold of monopoly and possession. The addict stands by while his junk legs carry him straight in on the junk beam to relapse...The more junk you use the less you have and the more you have the more you use...You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite." (page201) This passage is very significant to the whole book, on the imagery that drugs consume and take over people's lives. By the end of the book the reader realizes a lot about drugs and why people do them. if you were to sit naked at lunch time with family and friends then you are to show them everything about you, this is something people cannot do. To be venerable is to be weak and to feel weak is to have no purpose in life. Even such a thing as doing drugs gives someone a purpose, to get up and go out. To see another day but only for drugs. What do you make of the comparison of the rabid dog to a junkie? Having no choice because their bodies relied on it or at least in their mentality the needed it to survive.

The Real Meaning

Now that I have finished Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs I wanted to tell you what I made of it. The title is just like the doing anything society considers normal, but naked. Like that dream when you're at school and you realize your naked...in front of everyone. This sense of venerability is nerve racking and honestly free a frozen moment when everything you have is revealed. The meaning of the title relates in many ways to the text. On page 141 Burroughs explains, " Try using junk as a means to something else...Some citizens with Coco-Cola and aspirin control habits will be talking about the evil glamor of sending. But no one will talk about anything very long. The Sender, he don't like talking. The Sender is not a human individual...It is The Human Virus. (All viruses are deteriorated cells leading a parasitic existence...They have specific affinity for the Mother Cell; thus deteriorated liver cells seek the home place of hepatitis, ect. So every species has a Master Virus: Deteriorated Image of that species.)The broken image of Man moves in by minute and cell by cell...poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus." This passage is very important because it explains how addicts truly feel about the world, and their perspective seem right on compared to the many blind conservative views. People are open minded in different ways, depending on how they're brought up. What Burroughs is trying to say in this passage is try to not judge a heroin addict by their addiction but judge them as a person because everyone has flaws, bad habits, and addictions to some degree. Either negative or positive, "The Sender" is the conservative view and the "Mother Cell" is people who effect others negatively. Bringing others down to the whole that they're in. These negative effects or this "Human Virus" destroys humans and in the end Burroughs writes, "The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated." Assuming irony because many people see others and think they can just fix them, whose to say they're broken in the first place. Naked Lunch has many radical views but all have information backing up rather rational points. I like the extreme views because it's interesting to see that a person could actually think of things such as what is an addiction and who is the one to know right from wrong. In the end Naked Lunch shows the raw meaning of what life can truly be like, not always butterflies and rainbows.

Politics

William S. Burroughs view on politics is quite clear. Like most addicts of the fifties-sixties and like most people today his theory on gonvermnent was conspiracy. Sometimes He talks about religion but as a con man his views aren't the most conservative. His view on America is tainted, through media, advertising, and other cultural aspects Burroughs proves that he is a rational thinker and feels socirty doesn't accept that. What do you think about rational thinkers influence in the world, is it usually negative or positve?

Pusherman

There are many characters in Naked Lunch usually not interminable but always leaving a lasting impression. "I know this one pusher walks around humming a tune and everybody he passes takes it up. He is so grey and spectral and anonymous they don't see him and think it is their own mind humming the tune..." Burroughs contemplates on other people and concludes with "the world network of junkies, tuned on a chord of rancid jinssom, tying up in furnished rooms, shivering in the junk-sick morning ." Conveying the message of poking into the mind of a junkie, and finding a cure. Addictions are hard and different from bad habits the pusherman symbolizes how the buzz on drugs can get anyone at anytime. Like a song hummed then caught in your head. Burroughs also uses satire in Naked Lunch. Reading between the lines gets you further than reading the book as a whole. Since our minds don't know everything all at once it takes steps and interpretation and time to realize understanding. Burroughs is also making fun of how naive people are, how easily we are influenced, he includes himself in that statement.