The 1950's: The Beat Generation

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The 1940’s and 1950’s, an era where conformity, materialism, and sexual repression was the norm in America. Conformity was encouraged by President Eisenhower and if anybody thought differently they were dubbed a communist or “commie”. A counter culture group emerged aiming to radicalize young people to open their eyes to deception in America society and culture-enters the Beat Generation. The Beat Generation was a social and literary movement that was forming post World War II. The Beats were a group of writers that opposed conventional writing, spoke about issues regarding race, sex, and class, and rejected many cultural principles that was happening post war. The Origin of the Beats was in 1943, Allen Ginsberg meets Lucien Carr at Columbia University. Carr introduces Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. From there, the Beat Generation arises and their movement was faced with criticism along the way. The Beats received harsh criticism and negative backlash from the public, critics, and other observers. Despite the negativity, The Beat Generation prevailed throughout their journey. Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl was banned due to obscenity by custom officials. The 1950’s was the most sexually …show more content…
Naked Lunch was a controversial novel when it came out. The subjects of language to drug usage to homosexuality was obscene and shocking to his readers in the 1950’s. When Naked Lunch was banned in Boston due to obscenity the Supreme Court ruled the novel as a significance importance to literature. This was important to the Beat Movement because Burroughs challenged the ways of writing that were establishing during that era which helped establish Beat literature. Naked Lunch is a crucial literary work that helped the Beat movement because Naked Lunch challenged censorship and won paving the way for Beat Literature to be

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