Anti-Consumerism in the Works of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Roth Essay

Anti-Consumerism in the Works of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Roth After World War II, Americans became very concerned with keeping up with the Joneses. Everyday people were non nevertheless interested in fulfilling the American Dream because of the optimistic post-war environment, but in addition because of the economic emphasis on advertising that found a unused outlet daily in highway billboards, radio programs, and that popular tender device, the telecasting. With television advertising becoming the new way to show Americans what they did not (and should) have came a wide-eyed and fascinated interest in owning either kinds of things, products, and devices suddenly necessary in every home. One could not entirely hear about new necessary items, but see them as well. Meanwhile, marketplaces and small shops were being dismantled to create the supermarket, a temple of consumerism where all passerby may walk in and purchase almost anything he or she desires without a thought of th eir neighbor, who runs the suffering little fruit stand out around the corner. The literary rebellion of the 1960s was concerned, in part, with the desire to break knock off this growing consumer culture. Not everyone was so easily lulled by the singsong mottoes and jingles of television advertising and the call of the national supermarket. Poets like Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Jack Kerouac began struggling, in writing, against the oppressiveness of having. As Buddhistics, these writers saw the growing desire to fill whims and wants with items easily purchased as harmful to the ability to transcend suffering (instead of eliminating it). Combining the strategies of Asian Buddhist monks with American transcendentalist theory provided by Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emer... ...e when the rest of the nation was blindly enjoying their television programs and the convenience of the supermarket, these writers made strong statements warning against the love of t hings. During the 50s and 60s, many middle- and upper-class Americans had worked hard to afford conveniences, but Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Roth would say that it is not liberal to deserve your participation in the consumerist culture. Rather, they would say the consumerist culture, by nature, is mentally and culturally enslaving and to be avoided when possible for the sake of the integrity of the individual spirit. Works Cited Allen, Donald (ed.). The raw(a) American Poetry 1945-1960. Berkeley, CA U. of California P. 1960. Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. New York Penguin Books. 1958. Roth, Philip. Goodbye, Columbus and quint Short Stories. New York Modern Library. 1959.