17 pages • 34-minute read
America
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Cold War and US Foreign Policy
The poem is staunchly anti-imperialist and anti-Cold War. Ginsberg views America’s involvement in other countries and its engagement in the Cold War as a fundamental flaw that poisons all aspects of existence. It is a corruption, essentially, and Ginsberg does not hold back his hostility toward American policy. The most famous line of the poem is: “Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb” (Line 5). But Ginsberg really gets into this issue of the Cold War when he discusses Asia in the second stanza.
Ginsberg wrote this poem a couple of years after the Korean War and a few years before the sending of troops to Vietnam. This poem also comes off the heels of World War II, where the United States fought against the rising Japanese empire and ended up dropping two atomic bombs on the country. At this time, there was a growing sentiment in America, fueled by Cold War paranoia and xenophobia, that Asia was an area of the world not to be trusted and that could become a threat to American supremacy. Ginsberg laments against this focus, using the sarcastic lines, “Asia is rising against me. / I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance” (Lines 47-48), and then contrasting this American fear with America’s inability to recognize its own flaws and threats that exist from within its own borders. Ginsberg asks why America worries about Asia when millions of Americans are locked away in prisons and poverty, melting like flowers under 500 suns (52). This sentiment wasn’t exclusive to Ginsberg, though. Many activists during the 1950s and 1960s critiqued America’s focus on Cold War foreign policy and the detrimental effects this focus had on domestic policy.
Capitalism and Communism
Ginsberg makes many references to communism and socialism throughout the poem, all of which are positive. He asks when America will be worthy of its Trotskyites (Line 11), or followers of Leon Trotsky’s brand of communism. He says he feels “sentimental about the Wobblies” (Line 27), a leftist, socialist union organization. He taunts America, saying, “[y]ou should have seen me reading Marx” (Line 33), a reference to Karl Marx, one of the original theorists of communism. And just a few lines later, he refers to Uncle Marx who came over from Russia (Line 37).
Finally, near the end of the poem, he describes a memory of going to a Communist Cell meeting with his mother. The description is the longest continuous image and sentence in the entire poem, lasting four full lines. He describes the memory with nostalgia, calling the people “angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere” (Line 63). He even describes different speakers at these events who all made him feel genuine things that greatly contrast the negative feelings and emotions throughout the rest of the poem: Scott Nearing is a grand old man and a mensch and Mother Bloor makes him cry (Lines 64-65).
This romantic, sentimental memory contrasts with Ginsberg’s fascination with Time Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and other aspects of Americana, which are all treated with cynical sarcasm and frustration. America’s capitalist society has contributed to making Ginsberg “go mad” and has hindered his ability to focus and write. Clearly, for Ginsberg, part of the solution is embracing what he sees as a more empathetic and genuine system.
Mental Health Conditions
Most of Ginsberg’s work deals in some way with mental health conditions, and “America” is no exception. Considering Ginsberg’s experiences with his mother, who had schizophrenia, and his own mental health issues (Ginsberg was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital for a time), it is no wonder why Ginsberg was so obsessed with this issue. What’s interesting about Ginsberg is he often places the blame for his mental state on the state of the world. In this poem, he does this right away. He says in the first line that he has given America everything, and now he is nothing, and this leaves him unable to stand his own mind.
But as Ginsberg explores his frustrations, he finds that he is not immune to the influence of the thing he criticizes. He makes light of this later in the poem, attacking America and asking, “[a]re you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?” (Line 39). But in the next line, he folds and admits, “I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. / I read it every week” (Lines 40-41). Coupled with the sudden shifts in perspective and the frenzied pace of the lines, the poem reflects a mind in turmoil.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence