Henry Alvarez
Ms. Arencibia
World Literature Period 5
16 April, 2014
How Jim Morrison’s Poetry Lead A Movement
The United States of America found itself in a peculiar situation near the closing of
1959 and the beginning of 1960. There was a tremendous split between two very different generations. The older generation was a collection of people that witnessed the terrible acts of communism and the reign of Hitler, they fought bravely to expel Nazi Germany from the world and witnessed an attack on their own nation. They were a nation of go-getters that believed in the American Dream and worked to fulfill it. The children of this noble and brave generation found themselves questioning the world they lived in and …show more content…
This new culture, created out of America’s individuality, later went on to become the biggest and most widespread movement that preached the importance of the individual and expelled any belief in capitalism.
“The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom..” was a quote taken from William
Blake, an English poet, that Jim Morrison held close to him. This quote is more than a line from a poem but a motto for a generation that strayed away from contemporary thought and forged a path that was their own in each and every way. The Hippie Generation grew out of an already established non-conformist movement known as the Beat Generation, or Beatniks.
The Beatniks were a collection of authors living in New York city best known for writing against anything conformist. Many were openly homosexual, something absolutely absurd at that time, and experimented with drugs quite often. These Beatniks then migrated to San
Francisco and became vital in the upbringing of the upcoming Hippie Generation. From
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Greenwich Village, New York to San Francisco, California the basis for this new movement …show more content…
the 1970s for the hippie movement was not a time of joy. The movements popularity began to fall. The date the poem was published is very important because this was not only the Doors last stamp on the movement because of Morrison’s death in ’71 but it was the last stamp on the ideology of the movement that Morrison impacted greatly.
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Work Cited
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Davis, Stephen. Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend. New York: Gotham, 2004. Print.
The Doors
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Gill, Sam D., and Irene F. Sullivan. Dictionary of Native American Mythology. New York:
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"The Hedonization of America: The Hippie Movement (opinion)." NaturalNews. N.p., n.d.
Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
"The Hippie Counter Culture Movement (1960′s)." Mortal Journey. N.p., n.d. Web. 15
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"Hippie." CounterCulture. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
"Hippie Roots & The Perennial Subculture - Hippyland." Hippie Roots & The Perennial
Subculture - Hippyland. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Lewis, Jon E. Jim Morrison. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1998. Print.
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