The Apocalypse of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man. (William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, p. 7)
In 1980, William S. Burroughs delivered a speech at the Planet Earth Conference at the Institute of Ecotechnics in Aix-en-Provence titled ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’.1 In this speech, Burroughs, following religious tradition, says that the four horsemen of the apocalypse are Famine, Plague, War, and Death and moves on to prophesise a more contemporaneous apocalypse. In Burroughs’ apocalypse, War and Plague, for example, have become allies; this alliance, Burroughs announces, ‘was cemented with the first germ experiments’ (Burroughs, 1984, p. 12). The danger of these experiments lies in their ability to not only create new viruses but to also turn them into biological weapons. But for Burroughs there is a significant similarity between a twentieth-century-specific apocalypse, with its radiation and contaminants, and the religious apocalypse of the four horsemen. For Burroughs, both types of apocalypse ‘have no meaning outside of human context, they are in fact human inventions’ (p. 17). More specifically, they are the essential flaws in what Burroughs calls the ‘human artifact’ (p. 17) and in our evolution as a species. For Burroughs, the only way out is to first understand that our biological destiny ‘is in Space, and that our failure to achieve this is the basic flaw in the human artifact’ (p. 24). This speech constitutes Burroughs’ first appearance in the scene as an apocalyptist. Previous to this, he was best known as one of the fundamental members of...
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... and McCain, Gillian, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (London: Little Brown and Company, 1996)
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Ziegesar, Peter von, ‘After Armageddon: Apocalyptic Art Since the Seventies: Tactics of Survival in a Postnuclear Planet’ in Strozier, Charles B. and Flynn, Michael, eds., The Year 2000: Essays on the End (London: New York UP, 1997)
In MOD’s excel workbook I have used many macros to create shortcuts to different sheets and also macros to perform various tasks. Overall using macros will speed up how fast the end user can use and navigate the sheet and also make it easier to use. I have also used auto-sum, this automatically entered in a certain formula that I had chosen. By using auto-sum I saved time by not having to enter in long formulas. I have also used an automated filter tool, this tool filters out any data that the user decides is unneeded, which will help the user as it does not show data that useless to them or is unneeded.
McMichael, G., et. al., (1993) Concise Anthology of American Literature- 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
The Ontological Argument, which argues from a definition of God’s being to his existence, is the first type of argument we are going to examine. Since this argument was founded by Saint Anslem, we will be examining his writings. Saint Anslem starts by defining God as an all-perfect being, or rather as a being containing all conceivable perfections. Now if in addition of possessing all conceivable perfections t...
The existence of God is quite controversial issue. God has different names in the world, and a lot of people, strongly believe in his existence. While, on the other hand, there are also people who don’t believe in his existence. In their discussion entitled “Does God Exist?” William Lane Craig, who is the supporter of the idea of existence of God, debates with Austin Dacey, who is an atheist, on the idea of existence of God. They provide the strong arguments and their debates are quite interesting, and innovative (not similar to those arguments, we usually read about in book). These are the fresh views on the question of existence and non-existence of God.
My presentation will be about the depiction and meaning of violence and human nature, in C.M.’s novels.
Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.
The reader gets a vivid image of a huge industrial city built in “valleys huge of Tartarus”(4). This reference to Tartarus is saying that the city is virtually in a hell-like area. The image of hell is further exemplified by the line “A flaming terrible and bright”(12), which conjures up thoughts of fire and heat. The reference to hell and flames adds to the theme because it brings to light the idea of destruction and nature burning away. Similar to what happens when there is a forest fire. The fire is not just coming out of nowhere though, it is coming “from out a thousand furnace doors”(16), which furthers the idea of industrialization. There are no longer humans in this city which is evident because when talking about the beings in the city Lampman wrote “They are not flesh, they are not bone,/ They see not with the human eye”(33-34). This part of the poem is important because if there are no more humans left it is easy to assume that the only driving force of these “Flit figures that with clanking hands”(31) is work. They work to make the city bigger and to build more than they already
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of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you
In the 1900’s, the use of marijuana skyrocketed and its abuse gained momentum. In 1937, the Marijuana Act placed tax on its purchase. Those who refused to pay higher taxes were criminalized (Wikipedia). In 1969, the Marijuana Act was told to be unconstitutional, adding marijuana to the list of controlled substances and one year later marijuana was made illegal. In 1970, the people of America stood up for marijuana, creating the group NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). Their goal was to convince America to decriminalize the use of marijuana for adults. Oregon was the first state to decriminalize marijuana in small non-medical ...
Klein, Marcus. "Ralph Ellison." After Alienation: American Novels in Mid-Century. Cleveland: World Pub., 1964. 71-146.
Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter and Richard Yarborough. 6th ed. Vol. E. Boston: Wadsworth Cencage Learning, 2010. 2582-2590. Print.