Title and Biography

Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs

Presented by;
Mariyam Javed
Presented to;
Mam asma
Biography
William S. Burroughs was an American writer and visual
artist
He was a primary figure of the beat generation and a
major postmodernist author whose influence is
considered to have affected a range of popular culture as
well as literature
 Born in United states in 1914 and died in 1997
He was influenced by Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller and
William Shakespeare
Biography CONT’D
His famous albums are
Dead city radio
Call me Burroughs
Limits of control
Flat cat bonfire
Title
While talking about the title of this novel the writer once
said in one of his interviews that
“The title means what the words say; naked lunch,
a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of
every fork”
Although scholarly research tends to point toward Manet’s
“The Luncheon on the Grass” as his inspiration for the title
Naked lunch; Introduction
Naked lunch (sometimes The Naked Lunch) is a famous
novel by an American writer William S, Burroughs
The book is structure as a series of loosely connected
parts
He stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any
order
This novel was included in Times 100 best English
language novels from 1923 to 2005
Cont’d
In 1991 David Cronenberg directed a film of the same
name based on the novel and his other writings
This novel was published with the title The Naked Lunch
in Paris in July 1959 by Olympia Press
Because of US obscenity laws a complete American
edition did not follow until 1962
Cont’d
It was titled naked lunch and was substantially different
from the Olympia Press edition because it was based on an
earlier 1958 manuscript
The article ‘the’ in the title was never intended by the author
but added by the editors of Olympia Press in 1959 edition
The naked lunch remained the title and was used for the
1968 edition and the novel is often is known by the
alternative name; especially in UK where these editions
circulated
The Naked Lunch by William S.Burroughs
Presented to. Mam Asma Iram

Presented by. Hafiz Muhammad Nadeem

 Summary

The United States and Mexico

• Naked Lunch begins with the narrator, also known as Lee, as he tries to evade New York
City police. They want to arrest him for using heroin. He dodges an officer by hopping on
a subway train.

• The narrator travels across the United States, through Philadelphia,where the narrator and his
unnamed traveling companions abandon the Rube. 

• They go on to Chicago, St. Louis, and Houston before buying a large quantity of heroin in New
Orleans and proceeding to Mexico.
Freeland

• After Mexico, the narrator proceeds to the imagined country of Freeland. This place is
later revealed to be a "welfare state," where a totalitarian government controls its
populace through generosity.

• He is "assigned" to work with Dr. Benway as part of Islam Incomplete a shadowy

organization whose motives are unclear and primarily driven by individual agents. 

• Benway runs a Reconditioning Center where he conducts unethical and tortuous experiments
on drug addicts and homosexuals. They are forced to flee the facility when a computer
malfunction sets the inmates free and unleashes total chaos.
Interzone

• The scene then shifts to a realm the narrator calls Interzone, and the plot becomes disjointed.
The narrator describes the surreal experience of a man named Carl who becomes divorced
from reality when he goes to visit his friend Joselito in a sanitarium.

• A addict identified as the Sailor goes to a plaza in the city to buy a substance called Black Meat
 from creatures called Mugwumps.

• The narrator provides a brief description of his attempts at detox in a hospital where Dr.
Benway reappears to perform surgeries on two patients. He meet with his old friend who kick
the heroin.In ten years he must visit to county clerk and pretend to agree with clerk’s recism to
avoid eviction from apartment.

• Interzone, a city where drugs and sex of all kinds are freely available. The threat of revolution
against colonial influences
Continue..

Interzone is run by four opposing political parties:

• The Liquefactionists
• The Senders
• The Divisionists
• The Factualists. 

These parties also influence the narrator's involvement in Islam Inc., an organization without a clear agenda
Return to New York

• After the Sailor reappears and meets a young man at a café in the Interzone and
exchange drugs for sexual favors, the story shifts back to New York City.

• The narrator is caught by two narcotics officers, Hauser and O'Brien. A struggle
ensues, and the narrator shoots the officers and goes into hiding at a bath house.
The next day he can find no reports of the shooting in the papers, so he calls the
city's narcotics bureau. 

• He speaks to a lieutenant who has never heard of Hauser or O'Brien. The narrator
takes this as a sign he can no longer access the intersections of different realities. 

• The novel ends with a preface in which William S. Burroughs explains his motives for
writing Naked Lunch. He sought to present a look inside the mind of a drug addict.
Presented to: Mam Asma Iram
Presented by: Memoona Aslam
Topic: Themes of Naked Lunch
Definition of Theme

■ A theme in a piece of writing, a talk, or a discussion is an important idea or subject that

runs through it.
Themes of Naked Lunch
■ Drug addiction
■ Sexuality as addiction
■ Sadism
■ Medicine
■ Totalitarian
 Drug addiction
■ Drug addiction lies at the heart of naked lunch.
■ The novel portrays the inner life of a drug addict.
■ The lengths to which addicts will go to get a fix is portrayed in the desperate acts the characters
commit in order to obtain drugs.
■ They administer their drugs using whatever instruments are necessary. E.g; spoon and dropper.
■ And if their choices of drugs are unavailable, they substitute one substance for another.
■ Drawn from the author’s own drug-induced experiences, the narratives surrounding the protagonist
Lee depict heavy use of narcotics including heroin and opioids.
■ The vivid description of Rube’s waxy in chapter 3 provides a clear illustration of the effects these
drugs have on their uses.
■ The boy in chapter 20 who is afflicted with imaginary “coke bugs” highlights the desperation addicts
face when a fix is n’t readily available.
Sexuality as addiction
■ The other primary addiction driving the character in naked lunch is sex.The novel is
filled with increasingly lurid and disturbing description of sexual activity in all forms.
■ Homosexual behaviour figures prominently, notable because when the novel was
written, gay relationships were carefully hidden and conducting illicity, often in
dangerous circumstances.
■ The violent portrayls of sexual activity is seen in A.j’s blue movie and Hassan’s orgy,
where he manage people for sexual relation .
■ Addicts participate in demeaning sexual acts, devoid of pleasure and joy, because they
are not able to live openly with their addictions.
■ This scene also highlight the hypocrisy in American culture. The portral of sex, and
the repressed American women who arrive at Hassan’s rumpus room, illustrate how
these restrictions are psychologically destructive.
Sadism

■ Lee’s adventures throughout the novel are filled with sadistic encounters that are either
drug or sex-related. 
■ Sexual activities are not described in a glamorous manner but as a repulsive, vulgar or
foul experience. 
■ In Freeland, he comes across Dr. Benway, depicted as a vicious practitioner who uses
his skills to inflict torturous drug-induced acts on his patients.
■ In the dreamlike Interzone Lee encounters the market where drugs and boundless sexual
favors are offered on sale. The appalling consumption of the Black Meat in which the
consumers vomit after greedily eating in order to consume it again ,is a clear depiction
of the sadism. 
■ Secular wickedness is found everywhere, for instance, the Islam Inc. operative A.J who
conducts demeaning orgies while also committing extremely violent acts. 
Totalitarian
■ The novel also acts as a commentary on social institutions like government
■  Burroughs’ novel critiques the controlling nature of régimes over its people by creating these extreme
realities in Lee’s adventures. 
■ The text of the Naked Lunch reveal the strong distrust of government and authority
■ From the first line of the novel_”I can feel the heat closing in”_ Burroughs establishes an adversarial
relationship between the narrator and law enforcement
■ Interzone is ruled by assorted political parties, each of which is equally unappealing.They are all deriven by
a desire for absolute control over the bodies and minds of the citizens.
■ The philosophy of Freeland’s government is shown through its representative Dr. Benway who uses sadistic
and non-ethical methods to maintain order, Thus attesting to the totalitarian nature of the government .
■ The only representative of the government of Freeland is Dr.Benvay. His sadistic cruelty in the name of
maintaining order _his treatment in the Reconditioning Center and his harassment of Carl Peterson_ reveals
the ethos of Freeland’s government.
Continue…

■ The villainous doctors in the novel act as the enforcers of this tyrannical administration
with their mind control drugs, lobotomy, hypnosis, and torture financed by faceless
entities.
■ The governments seek to oppress its citizens by offering them everything and in turn
expect total surrender of their autonomy.
 Medicine
■ Although government officials are menacing, the most wicked person in Naked
Lunch are doctors. 
■ Dr. Benway, the most prominent of these doctors, is actually both a physician and
government entity. He uses his skills to torture or "recondition" patients.
■ He performs unnecessary operations using unconventional methods, and he expresses
no concern when patients die, considering death just part of a day's work.
■ Dr. "Fingers" Shafer is another sinister doctor, revealed to have stood trial in the past for
performing "forcible lobotomy" on patients. He conducts experiments on a man that
eventually turn him into a monstrous black centipede, which is destroyed by an angry
mob. 
■ His experiments indicate a sense of ambition and a desire to raise his profile and
reputation. His forcible lobotomies indicate a need for control. 
Continue..
• Use of lobotomies as a treatment for mental illness seems "undesirable" behavior in the
1950s. 
• At that time, homosexuality was treated as a mental disorder in Western nations.
• This misunderstanding of mental illness is also visible in Dr. Berger's radio show. 
• In 1956 Burroughs's "Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs" was published
in the British Journal of Addiction. It is also included in later editions of Naked Lunch. 
• The letter suggests the portrayal of doctors in Naked Lunch may also reflect the
inadequate treatment Burroughs experienced in his efforts to end his addiction .
Stylistic Analysis

Presented by
Khatoon Ramzan
Stylistic Features
 Type….... novel
 Plot……….sub- stories
 Time …….not specified
 Place……..undetermined
 Characters …limited description
 Language….Dialogue
 Tense…….. Present tense
 Symbols…...safety pin, dropper, black meat.
 Genre………satire
 William Burroughs
 Naked lunch starts as a first person narrative,

“I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves”.
 Richard Pearce

“The style of the whole book is schizophrenic, hovering between

mock- scientific, reporting and jazzlike improvisation”.
Plot
 Plot is complex there is no conventional treatment of narrative present in
the work.
 The structure of the text is composed in a way to make the discourse

more determine.
 The sections succeed one another that force the reader either to perceive

each section separately or base the interpretation on a selection of

sections that highlight some of the part as important.


Conti…….
 The time setting of the work is not specified, Black Marketers of World
2 hardly qualifies as a reliable informant.
 The shifts in setting are abrupt and often occurring without any

explanation.
 The first person narrative section –The Rube takes place in US

cities….Benway(sections) which is also first person narrative set in

Freeland.
Conti…..
 The real life places have the tendency to change into strange and
sometimes even alien landscape.
 Real world places…..Mexico or Venice
 Imagined places……Freeland Republic, Annexia or the island prevail in

the text.
 Characters
 Appearance is often ignored.
 Visual representation of clothing is provided.
 Physical features…Mark…old, handsome, green eyes and black hair.
 Benway ……….wears glasses.
 Hassan ………..wears ten gallon hat.
 Description …..unusual and the bizarre.
 Language
 The novel is written is The Present Tense.
 The work is full of Parenthetical explanations, Narrative Monologues

and Dialogues.
 The text is not limited to words or short phrases, when employing

various vocabularies.
 Symbols
 Safety pin and Dropper

 Junkies’ desperation
for a fix.
 Black meat …..heroin and other real life addictive substances.
 Noose………..the hypocrisy of American society.
 Genre
 Sense of Humor often has satirical overtones.
 Sections ……Islam Incorporated
 Parties of Interzone
 Meeting of international
 Conference of Technological Psychiatry
 Humor
 Horrifying or immoral to the point of absurdness.

 “Did any of you ever see Doctor Tetrazzini perform? I say perform
advisedly because his operations were performances.”
Post Modern Features

Presented by
Simal Ahmad Abbasi
 Meta Fiction
 In this novel “Naked Lunch’ the author made people familiar so many times with
his own writing.
 “There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at
the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to
impose “story” “plot” “continuity”... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of
certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an
entertainer”.
 “In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a
cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already
been thoroughly surveyed”.
William S. Burroughs
Contnued
Dystopian Fiction
 Dystopian literature is a genre of fictional writing used to
explore social and political structures in 'a dark, nightmare
world. ' The term dystopia is defined as a society characterized
by poverty, or oppression and the theme is most commonly
used in science fiction and speculative fiction genres.
In the paper “the Significance of Sex and Drugs in William
Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Bret Easton Ellis American
Psycho ’ by Dylan Belgrado states the novel The Naked Lunch as
dystopian fiction.
 Paranoia
• Naked Lunch is a dark and wild ride filled with paranoia,
elevation, horror, erotic fantasies, opium dreams and
hallucination.
• “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going
on. A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going
on”.
William S. Burroughs
• A villainous doctors in the novel act as a enforcers of this
tyrannical administration with peoples’ mind control drugs.
 Intertextuality
There are various references to the geographical spaces all over the text
,like freeland, interzone .He create allusion to drift back to reality . The
author use cut up technique to treat the transgressive theme drug and sex.
He also introduces the exploration of sexual violence through the art of
collage.
“uses Writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. There are
things I wish I could forget”.
William S. Burroughs
 Realism
• The author in his writing show the dream like setting to depict the reality of being a junky and the
current scenario of U.S war on drugs.
• The protagonist goes to an automat restaurant where junkies hang out. He considered the people
there in worse shape than himself but realizes he will someday soon be as bad as them.
“When you stop growing you start dying.”
William S. Burroughs
Surrealism
• William travels to interzone , a city that exist in a surreal mixture of culture and eras in search of black
meat.
Automatism
• Automatism refers to creating art without conscious thought, accessing material from the unconscious
mind as part of the creative process.
• In 1959, William Burroughs released Naked Lunch which he described as “Automatic writing gone
horribly wrong”. Previously, I have posted about Automatism, but it is a process of writing where the
writer tries to avoid conscious thoughts.
Conclusion

■ Burroughs novel criticizes the controlling nature of

regime over its people by creating extreme realities in
Lee’s adventure . It also act as a satire on social
institution like government.
■ Burroughs claims that Naked Lunch is not about
addiction /drug abuse but rather about the current U.S
war on drugs.
Thank you