In the first place I would like to analyze the poem of the school of the new criticism that emphasizes the aesthetic aspect. The focus is on the tropes used in the poem. Ginsberg’s poem focuses on drugs, altered states of consciousness, and the counterculture. The trope, ‘angel-headed hipsters (a person outside the mainstream culture) burning for the ancient heavenly connection with the crashed dynamo in the night machinery is a metaphor that fuses eastern mysticism with techno-punk and refers to to the thirst of addicts to altered states, and also reveals that the heart of the poet is ecstatic by a postmodern Gnosticism.

The rhetorical figure: ‘they bared their brains under the EL and saw the Mohammeddian angels staggering on the lighted house roofs is a hyperbolic personification and refers to a mind clouded by surreal imagination, a rendezvous with jazz music and the techno-gnosticism. The Blake-light tragedy among war scholars who were expelled from academics for insanely posting obscene odes in the skull window is a metaphor, where a politicized Vietnam protest and sit-ins were vehemently thwarted by the bureaucracy. selfish. “Who ate fire retardant paint in hotels” is a metaphor that suggests drug inhalation. ‘They purged their torsos night after night’ refers to an idealism with innumerable adventures with heterosexuality. ‘Blind streets of shivering clouds and lightning’ is the epitome. ‘Time between peyote solidity of corridors, cemetery sunrises in the backyard’ is a metaphor that reveals a mechanistic surreal hallucination, a dark obsession, a phantasmagoria. “Who sank all night in the underwater light of Bickfords” is a metaphor that suggests a mind-blowing mysticism obtained from a drug-induced journey. ‘Hearing the crack doom in the hydrogen box’ is a metaphor that is inclined to have a trip with rock music. “Baltimore glowed in unearthly ecstasy is personification”. ‘Who disappeared in the volcanoes of Mexico leaving nothing but the shadow of the breastplates and the lava of the ash poetry scattered in the chimney is a metaphor that portrays the subliminal, chthonic, cathartic experience when one goes through the vertiginous mist of an induced trip for drugs. “What the Sphinx of cement and aluminum opened their skull and ate their brain and imagination” is a metaphor that shows the mechanization of the soul going through a drug-induced journey of narco-neurosis. ‘Moloch, whose skyscrapers are erected in long streets like Jehovah’ is a simile that portrays the cold gaze of the city on the human being. The city is an inhuman spectacle, deformed and distorted until it drowns feelings and passions. ‘Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the mist’ is a personification to show a wasteland of dehumanization.

Next, I would like to unravel the political consciousness inherent in the poem. The poet laments the destruction of the “best generation” in New York. The poet is a defender of the counterculture and experimenting with drugs and alcohol in excess is the norm. The poet is in both minds and shows a contradiction. Has America become a drug travel ghetto and a mental and financial hell for its proletarians? The poet bombards the American bureaucracy for having expelled protesters from the Vietnam War from the university. The American bureaucracy gets into modern linguistic jargon: Trump Trumpeting. The American bureaucracy is colonially male and sexist. The poet is a criticism of the legal machine for having arrested marijuana holders. The poet emphasizes the pacifism of the countercultural generation by distributing anti-war pamphlets and organizing sit-ins at the university. The poet describes in a metaphor the narcotic haze of capitalism. The poet sympathizes and becomes a defender of egalitarianism. The poet is enthusiastic about the protests and mentions how counterculture activists came across screaming police cars. ‘Children sobbing in armies’ suggests that military conscription reveals the evil of capitalism to extend its tentacles of vicious power and start and engage in wars around the world.

The poet in a metaphor compares Moloch, the capitalist state with an incomprehensible prison. Again the poet says in metaphorical language: Moloch the pure machinery: Moloch whose fingers are ten armies. The poet expresses the counterculture of the protest against an inhuman government that is globally monstrous and satanically obsessed with the rights of the defenders of the Counterculture movement. The poet continues again with invective metaphors: “Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows: Moloch whose skyscrapers rise in long streets like endless Jehovah: Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog.” The poet becomes a prophet of the dehumanized and mechanized creation of people whose lives turn into nihilism of despair. “I am with you in Rock Land, where you plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the nationalist Golgotha.” The poet laments a just society based on socialist lines. The poet becomes utopian when he speaks of a supreme type of mystical freedom.

To base the work psychoanalytically would be to consider the poet as a sensitive hedonist, liberal with morals, but a Gandhi who advocates indulgence and pacifism in politics. The poet supports a drug-induced conscience and is a libertine when it comes to lewd sex. The poet is a techno-Gnostic who is fascinated with the philosophies of Eastern mysticism. The poet is a hybrid of the East and the West. The poet’s hallucinations are surreal and go against reason. The poet’s mind is in a haze, a neurotic labyrinth where time becomes a cosmic language of a vehicle flowing in streams of consciousness. Being populated in multiple worlds and multiple realities is a mythical and poetic adventure for the poet’s mind. The poet achieves a mechanized, mystical, cathartic and deformed transcendence, the consciousness that echoes the beatific in a world that is heading towards the apocalypse. The poet is an angelic archetype, a fallen angel who is ultimately an idealist and who has a utopian vision of his society. Dream and reality merge in beatific visions. For example: the poet sees visions of Muhammad’s angels staggering on the lighted ceiling. The vision becomes like a surreal painting with a voice. Is the poet a hedonistic Bacchus when he openly preaches about experimentation with free sex and alcohol? Is the poet disturbing the democratic spirit of society? The poet is a visionary, an internalized angelic mystic whose mind is torn between Christ, Buddha and Time and Plato. The poet has to be criticized for still clinging to the great narratives of the time and failing to follow the motto of a mythology that would triumph over individuality.