Howl

I actually feel very reconciled with the way the poem ends. Initially when I read the whole poem through I really didn't understand it, but after it was broken down in class I felt that the central ideas really came together. The majority of the first section of the poem addresses how Ginsberg feels the "best minds of his generation" tried to find transcendence and meaning within the world. The people he describes turned to drugs, gave way to insanity, looked towards art, and various other activities in order to find a higher level of awareness and spirituality. At the end of the first and second section, Ginsberg shares his beliefs on the subject: when art is done right, one can find a connection to God. I feel that that message directly correlates to the rest of the poem. He is basically saying that all drugs taken and all of the suffering these people have subjected themselves to are not accomplishing their goal. That these "best minds" are wasted when not applied to their art/craft/love.

We also see this within the second section of the poem. I would imagine that Moloch is a metaphor for capitalism. I imagine that Ginsberg is then discussing in the second section how the same great minds are not welcome in the capitalist society. The poets and artists are struggling to fit into a world that doesn't understand them and they in turn do not understand themselves. In the end of the poem however, we see some kind of comfort in the idea that the "mad generation" "bade farewell" to that world and found solitude and peace elsewhere. That idea hearkens to the end of the first section where Ginsberg describes art as the true path to God and now in this section, an escape.