Speaker and characters

Here, we present the characters and speaker of the poem “HOWL” by Allen Ginsberg.

Speaker

The poem is rendered by a lyrical first person speaker marked by the personal pronoun ‘I’ (p. 77, l. 1), which is the persona of the poet himself, Allen Ginsberg. This can be deduced from the numerous allusions to the author’s personal experiences, such as him writing on the windows of his university and being expelled, which was a real-life event:

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing
obscene odes on the windows of the skull, (p. 77, ll. 15-16)

This speaker is critical of and disappointed with the American mainstream society which destroys the young generation, pushing youngsters to madness and violent rebellious acts:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for
an angry...