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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Decay of the American Imagination

“Howl” emits a fierce cry of pain and rage at the decay of the American imagination. In the context of this poem, the phrase “American imagination” has two primary meanings. The first meaning relates generally to the worldview of everyday Americans. One of the charges the speaker makes throughout “Howl” is that there has been an increasing culture of conformity to mainstream social values. In postwar America, where “Howl” takes place, the cultural mainstream placed a strong emphasis on growth, which essentially meant sexual reproduction and economic materialism. Those individuals who didn’t identify as heterosexual, or who rejected the relentless consumerism of the age, were easily dismissed as deviant and hence cast into the margins of society. This point brings us to the second primary meaning of the “American imagination.” As mainstream social ideals became increasingly restrictive, many free-thinking artists and intellectuals felt that the compulsion to conform to such ideals eroded their freedom. The more restrictive mainstream cultural morality became, the more marginalized such free thinkers felt. As such, their capacity for creativity degenerated. Thus began the slide into madness articulated in the poem’s famous opening line: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.”

The Liberating Potential of Counterculture

In direct contrast to the poem’s concern with the oppressive mainstreaming of American culture in the postwar period, “Howl” also celebrates the liberating potential of counterculture. This sense of celebration emerges frequently in the poem’s first part, in which the speaker frequently champions countercultural values of self-expression and spiritual questing. For instance, the speaker pays occasional tribute to the mind-expanding “trips” made possible by hallucinogenic drugs. Of particular interest, however, is the speaker’s enthusiastic invocation of human sexuality and its liberating potential, as in line 41. The speaker’s treatment of sex is undeniably affirming, even including a suggestive association between orgasm and mystic vision. Taken as a whole, the speaker celebrates those who open themselves to possibilities beyond the strait-laced norms of mainstream American society. Whereas those who conform to the mainstream incarcerate themselves in restrictive cells of self-repression, those who resist conformity ultimately “cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time” (line 54).

The Revelatory Possibilities of the Imagination

The speaker of “Howl” laments the way mainstream American society has eroded people’s capacity for creativity by devaluing the fruits of the imaginative mind. Instead of venerating ingenuity and invention, postwar American society had, according to the speaker, begun to worship at the altar of “Moloch.” Moloch is the name of a Canaanite fire god who in the poem symbolizes destructive ideals like economic materialism and social conformity. As long as Moloch reigns supreme over American society, the status quo will remain imprisoned in mindless consumerism and a pointless drive for growth. In the face of such a stagnant vision of existence, the speaker of “Howl” continually insists on the importance of the imagination. Imagination is necessary not only because it can liberate us from our imprisonment in the status quo. It’s also necessary for its capacity to lead to new epiphanies that connect us to realms of meaning and truth that exist beyond everyday reality. Evidence of the revelatory possibilities of the imagination appears everywhere in “Howl.” Indeed, it frequently seems like imagination enables access to a mystic realm that exists just beneath the surface of ordinary life, as in these lines (lines 24–26):

   who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kaballah [sic] because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
   who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,
   who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy

Here and elsewhere, the speaker reveals the revelatory possibilities of the imagination.

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