William S. Burroughs was a member of the Beat Generation of writers whose main connection was their complete rejection of middle-class values and the lifestyle they represented. Burroughs' Naked Lunch is a purposefully obscene rant that serves as social satire against the hypocrisies and exploitation the author felt characterized American society during the 1960s. Skerl maintains that "Naked Lunch attacks without implying any positive standard as traditional satiric work does. The individual, anarchic freedom that lies behind the destructive satire exists in a vacuum"(46).
In the work Burroughs provides us with any number of shocking characters and scenes, from the depraved Dr. Benway giving abortions in subways when he loses his license to pornographic movies called "Blue Movies" where Burroughs (87-88) graphically describes auto-erotic asphyxiation of adolescents. Shocking and pornographic scenes like these and Burroughs inclusion of pervasive heroin use and obscene language is used by the author to satirize what he finds to be the shocking and repulsive nature of American consumerism and exploitation after WWII. We see this clearly in the novel in one scenario where Burroughs creates a character who teaches his anus to speak. The "talking ass" soon takes over the man's body and has a mind of its own (Burroughs 110). Burroughs' (110) Dr. Benway wonders why the body is constructed so efficiently, when it should just be one hole that both consumes and excretes or an "all-purpose blob" of consumption and excretion. Clearly this is Burroughs' satire for what he felt was the rampant consumerism and waste inherent in American culture.
Burroughs' satirizes a number of other characters in the work, from machismo dads who think purchasing hookers makes their sons "men" to local authorities who are racist and reveal the intolerance Burroughs finds characteristic of American culture, particularly in rural...