Comparing Ginsberg And Jack Kerouac

The “Beats Generation” defined a movement that influenced a generation of freethinking. The “Beats generation” was derived from the literary term of Beat. From the website of Encyclopædia Britannica, it’s biography entry on Jack Kerouac explains the definition of Beat, “meant “down-and-out” as well as “beatific” and therefore signified the bottom of existence (from a financial and an emotional point of view) as well as the highest, most spiritual high.” This movement and its message that says anything is suitable for subject matter, is displayed particularly in the works of literature. Three figures emerged as leaders of the counterculture movement, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. These three writers came together to spearhead the movement and whilst their ideas did mesh, each had their …show more content…
Burroughs were exceptional writers who through their novels expressed lives and how certain factors affect those lives. From both Kerouac and Burroughs there was a difference in the prose, from the themes, characterizations and how the novels were written. The differences of the two authors as novelists and their writing style are explored in this essay from Kerouac’s notable novel On The Road, to Burroughs’s drug fueled Naked Lunch and Junkie. Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. According to John Tytell in his books Naked Angels, Jack Kerouac “clearly was the living center of the Beat movement- not only the one who named it but its heart and impetus.” (Pg 53 Paragraph 1)
Kerouac explored many subjects in his works but the subject he most focused on was America. In Naked Angels Tytell writes, “ He expressed extraordinary sensitivity to the nascent tensions, emerging mores, and the beginnings of s new consciousness in American life, recording the darker aspects of conformity and materialism even as he anticipated and charted the changes in lifestyle…” (Pg