Jim Morrison Thesis

At first glance The Doors don’t seem to be Beat influenced and while The Doors were heavily influenced by literature, they practically released a reading list when they became a national band, they were also obviously influenced by film (Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek were UCLA film students when they met), but theatre was an influence, as well as Blues music.If you delve past surface appearances you will find The Doors, especially Jim Morrison were influenced by The Beats (most of this essay focuses on Jim Morrison because he was The Doors chief lyricist and the most widely read in literature of The Doors).The first thing The Beats gave Morrison is the most important and overlooked influence, they gave Jim Morrison a reading list.

“ They have no real control over events or their own lives. The closest they ever get is the television set.” Fear the Lords who are secret among us The Lords are w/in us Born of sloth & cowardice In the aftermath of the Miami incident, the largest tour the Doors had ever scheduled was canceled show by show, making a travesty of the band’s reputation and finances, but ironically leaving Jim free to at last pursue other interests.

It was in the following year that Simon and Schuster would publish the two volumes in one edition.

It is an important element of his legacy, and the underlying cause of his torment by the Establishment, who knew exactly what Jim was talking about when he screamed “ You’re all a bunch of fucking slaves” in Miami.

Jim would later say of The Lords: Notes on Vision : “ What that book is a lot about is the powerlessness that people have in the face of reality,” Jim said.

He loved to learn perhaps more than anything else, and it has been said of Jim that he didn't just learn things, rather he merged with them.

During his days at UCLA film school, he continued to fill notebook after notebook.His insights into the nature of the human experience, and his prophetic vision of the future are astounding.His maturity as both a critical thinker and a poet was developed to an incredible degree for a young man in his early twenties. If possible, his work is even more relevant now than at the time it was first published. But the most valuable thing I can direct you now is having an open mind ready like a sponge to soak up everything and anything. Farrell, Kenneth Patchen, Balzac, Cocteau, Molière, Whitman, Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, James Joyce.The most influential in Morrison’s development as a writer with a desire to be a poet was French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud.Morrison was influenced by Rimbaud’s “A Season in Hell” as well as “Illuminations.” Also important to Morrison was Rimbaud’s biography.But my reading quickly exploded after reading Morrison’s biography and seeing some of the books he devoured when he was in his teenage years. I followed the literary breadcrumbs – like I still do today – and, by the time I finished high school, I had been exposed to a seriously diverse array of books than spanned the great literary and philosophical canons of many countries across the world. While The Lords is a collection of many interesting insights and aphorisms, it is The New Creatures which reveals Jim Morrison’s first fledgling poetic works.There is no doubt that Jim's first love and perhaps his greatest gift was language, and his poetry exemplifies this gift in a startling, succinct and truly courageous honesty.