The Role of Drugs in American Literature

"Dean and I are embarked on a tremendous season together. We're trying to communicate with absolute honesty and absolute completeness everything on our minds. We've had to take Benzedrine. We sit on the bed, crosslegged, facing each other." (p41) In this quotation Dean and Marx are being watched by Sal. They are embarking on a "season" or trip together by expanding off each other's ideas. The Beat movement was all about writing and poetry so they are flowing with each other's eccentric ideas. In order to write and "communicate" with "absolute honesty" and "completeness" they have taken a drug called benzedrine or "bennies." These were paper strips found in inhalers that were then rolled up into balls and taken with alcohol or coffee, used as a stimulant. It was one of the very first recreational drugs, or drugs taken for non-medical purposes. It is obvious that recreational drugs are illegal and harmful, many are deadly. Yet why is it that Jack Kerouac's writing style changed, when influenced by drugs such as bennies also called speed? Why is such a popular book, based on alcoholism and drugs, so effective to American culture? Although the price paid was Jack's death from alcoholism, why is it that On The Road is so popular when Jack typed it under the influence of benzedrine (speed), and is the cost worth it?

The Generation Gap

(Above: Jim Morrison a controversial musician)
The definition of revolution in the dictionary is a “dramatic change in ideas or practice” this is repeated throughout history. When a certain amount of people feel the same way about a certain thing, they try to make a change. Much like women oppression in the 1920s, a woman was faced with double standards. Soon liberation was underway, today women and men both can vote. The Beat Generation was similar to this. This social circle broke boundaries, with ideas so radical that it took only three influential people to form a generation. Some issues that were focused on were spiritual liberation, sexual "revolution" for instance gay/women's/and black liberation, freedom from censorship, decriminalization of some laws against marijuana and other drugs, development of rhythm and blues into rock and roll which influenced musicians in the later fifties and sixties, spreading ecological consciousness, resistance to the military-industrial machine civilization, gratitude towards peculiarity, and respect for the earth. Many of these ideas were viewed at the time as crazy and looked down upon by a generation that only knew so much. “…all in darkness now as we fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess-across the night, eastward over the Plains, where somewhere an old man with white hair was probably walking towards us with the Word, and would arrive any minuet and make us silent.” (p55) How does this quotation describe the Beatniks, as they were called, views? Notice how the W is capitalized on “Word” and who does this white haired old man represent? The Great Depression was just finishing, and the fifties were becoming a time of freedom for self expression.

The Mad Ones

The Beat Movement described an important time in the 1950s when prominent American writers got together and established a style of writing that influenced the Western Culture. On (p11) Jack Kerouac writes, "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!" What do you think this means, take into consideration that this text was written during the 1950s when most of the United States was considered "conservative."