1950's and The Beats Generation: 1950's Literature and It's Connection to the American Identity

The literature that we assigned the class to read has a lot to do with the way society was starting to become in the 1950's and it carries on to this modern era as well. The movement that began around the World War II time period has fully bloomed into what society is now. This is exactly what A Supermarket in California and A Perfect Day for Bananafish are about. The way that Americans became more like consumerists day by day and the way that possession defined objects became more valued than the morals that once shaped American into the mighty nation that it is. Now a days American society is more concerned with material possessions than ever before. Every new product that comes out is a must buy for every person in the country and we live in a must have society. We live in a society of people that own more pairs of shoes than they could ever need in a life time. This is what society has become and this is exactly the change that Allen Ginsberg didn't want to see. He didn't want to see America become what it is now and he wanted to see that old lovely America be preserved. So yes, modern day American society has a lot to do with the literature that sprang up in the 1950's and the themes that were found in the literature back then are still definitely present in society today.