THE BEAT GENERATION IN SOCIAL and CULTURAL CONTEXT

Abstract

Post-war era significantly irreversibly changed the concept of the US nation and identity at all. The Great Depression in the 1930s had seriously affected the American Economy; however, the Second World War resuscitated the US economy. The USA became the world power; and in the postwar era, the Americans enjoyed an unprecedented personal prosperity and individual freedom. The widespread theories of Freudian psychology highlighted the individual’s origin of mind and the seriousness of importance of the individual, which was also the social impact of World War Two. Secondly, gender issues were significant social matter of the American Society in the post-war America. Contributing much to changing concept of identity, the Beat Generation is one of the most significant results of the history of literature and literary movements during the post-war era. Thirdly, against the traditional methods of composition, together with the publication of Kerouac’s On the Road in 1957, this period would be a newly bred movement in American Literature. The members of Beat Generation Literary Movement made an all-out effort to open up new possibilities of modern composition. The phrase ‘to be on your own’ is at the heart of our understanding of the aspect of the language that the Beat Generation Literary Movement had formed