Comparing the Gettysburg Address and Ginsberg's America

1530 Words4 Pages

Comparing the Gettysburg Address and Ginsberg's America

Many writers have considered the identity of America. Two remarkable writers of two different time periods have shouldered this. They created two important works. The first, Abraham Lincoln; a great leader in the midst of an incredible time of change and confusion, delivered the Gettysburg Address to an assembly that came to him saddened and horrified by the trials of war. These same people left, changed, that day from the cemetery. The other, Allen Ginsberg, wrote the poem "America" for a generation of people caught between World War II and the Cold War. The comparison between these two works is important for learning the identity of all Americans.

The histories of America were used to attest to each work's ideas. Abraham Lincoln examined the founding father's works for democracy. He also wrote about the soldiers in the Battle of Gettysburg and their fight. These were the ones, as Lincoln said in the address, who "here gave their lives that the nation might live". When Allen Ginsberg wrote "America", he was speaking to people who had seemed to have lost all good intentions for America. "He had mulled over a way to write a long prophetic poem that addressed what he perceived to be the spiritual and cultural decline of America" (Schumacher 218). Historical events Ginsberg cited directly reflect the society which influenced him. They also show the bitter twist the speech's words "here gave their lives that the nation might live" to those Americans involved in these events. Sacco and Vanzetti, whom Ginsberg mentioned powerfully in the poem, are good examples of this. Sacco and Vanzetti were tried and convicted for killing two men and stealing 15,000 dollars...

... middle of paper ...

...aham Lincoln. Chicago: University of Illinois Press,1994.

Coolidge, Olivia. The Statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976.

Merrill, Thomas F. Revised Edition. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988.

Neely, Mark Jr. The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Rosenthal, M.L. "Poet of the New Violence". On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg. Ed. Lewis Hyde. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. 29-31.

"Sacco-Vanzetti Case". Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM,1993.

Schumacher, Michael. Dharma Lion. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.

"Scottsboro Boys". http://www.afroam.org/

history/scott/scotts.html. (1 April 1998).

Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.

More about Comparing the Gettysburg Address and Ginsberg's America

Open Document