e steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong and amnesia…” (Howl 2).
Ginsberg is howling to have his voice heard in the midst of what he generally felt was a diminishing and absurd society. It is the values of this society that Ginsberg finds hell. The poem perfectly represents the Beat’s attempt to throw their harsh criticisms of American social institutions into the face of the middle-class with little attempt at reconciliation of viewpoints. The characteristics of this hellish society are many, and we find a majority of them inside the whirlwind tirade whipped up by Ginsberg in his Howl. The poem is broke into three section and includes a footnote. The first section reflects the brutalized, nightmarish images that Ginsberg found relevant to modern American society, a hell in his depiction. These dehumanizing forces are responsible for dehumanizing all who refuse to adopt middle-class values, and the second sectio
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