Carl Sandburg’s Use of Literary Devices
Carl Sandburg has been captivating reader’s attention since his first published poem in 1920’s(Baym 763). Sandburg understood the powerful use that literary devices play in literary works. He was known for using these devices to connect with readers, and implementing deeper themes into his works. He is one of the most famous poets for using these techniques. Nina Baym wrote that “Sandburg believed that the people themselves, rather than a cadre of intellectuals acting on behalf of the people, would ultimately shape their own destiny”(763). He shaped his literary work so people of all demographics could relate, and embedded different unique perspectives with literary device for people who
For example, in Sandburg’s poem Chicago, the whole first stanza uses personification. He writes “Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders”(Sandburg 764). By using personification, Sandburg gives human characteristics to non-human things. He references “brawling” and “big shoulders” which are human characteristics that a city cannot have. Sandburg showed the diversity of the city, and people through his use of personification, and he “catalogs Chicago’s glories as well as its degradation; or rather, in recognizing its weaknesses and seeing through and beyond them, he arrives at its greatness: the muscular vitality, the momentum, the real life that he loves”(Masterplots). In the poem Fog, Sandburg uses personification to personify the fog to resemble a cat and the fogs essence. In lines one thru three Sandburg uses personification, “The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking”(765). He describes the fogs behavior and actions as if it were a living being. I In Carl Sandburg’s poem Grass personification plays a pivital role in understanding the theme of the poem. Sandburg uses personification to give the grass human qualities to convey how the grass acts to
With the use of imagery Sandburg “provided concrete visual details that vividly illustrate the general semantics extensional devices. Conversely, the general semantics extensional devices provide insights into Sandburg 's poetry”(Mass). He used the device of imagery in his poem Chicago to paint a vivid picture in reader’s minds with descriptive words like “under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing white teeth”(Sandburg 765). The poem Fog presents a feeling of movement which is created by the use of imagery. There is always a progression in the presence and movement of the fog which is in turn resembles a cat and its movements. With Sandburg’s descriptive detail orientated word choice “Sandburg exhibits an imagist 's bent for describing the bare details of a scene, even in those poems whose enthusiastic and garrulous speakers do not retain the detachment and brevity characteristic of undisputed imagist poems”(Van Wienen). In the poem Grass, Sandburg uses imagery to present a strong image of how destructive war is. By listing off “Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo”, Sandburg presents a strong image of how the dead bodies resulted from the actions of war(766). By providing this vivid picture through imagery it makes readers understand the deeper meaning behind the bodies and the purpose of the
In her novel, “The Street,” Petry uses personification in the interest of establishing a relationship between the setting and Lutie Johnson. “The wind grabbed their hats, pried their scarves from around their necks, stuck its fingers inside their coat collars, blew their coats away from their bodies.” (Lines 31-34) The wind is described as “assaulting” people on the street. Personifying the wind as having ‘fingers’ gives it an eerie tone. The wind is shown as an obstacle that the pedestrians must overcome, the wind blocked Lutie path as if it was the difficult situation she is facing. The wind forced her to shiver as “It’s cold fingers...touched the back of her neck, explored the sides of her head.” (Lines 38-40) It was the wind was a dominate male pushing her back to her current living condition. The wind is described negatively through its
The imagery in this passage helps turn the tone of the poem from victimization to anger. In addition to fire images, the overall language is completely stripped down to bare ugliness. In previous lines, the sordidness has been intermixed with cheerful euphemisms: the agonizing work is an "exquisite dance" (24); the trembling hands are "white gulls" (22); the cough is "gay" (25). But in these later lines, all aesthetically pleasing terms vanish, leaving "sweet and …blood" (85), "naked… [and]…bony children" (89), and a "skeleton body" (95).
For instance, “smell of gunpowder” (Magnus, 6), which is repeated multiple times, is a demonstration of how much the soldier values his war memories, for the solder describes the smell as “stimulating” (Magnus, 8) and “life-giving” (Magnus, 7). At the same time, as the soldier describes war in an enumeration towards the end of the poem, the audience learns his sadness and regret in face to the fact that “No one comprehends a soldier’s work anymore” (Magnus, 28). This enumeration, however, is used to recreate the images that the soldier experienced during his service so that the audience would feel the intensity of war. In addition, the assonance in “knobby bones” (Magnus, 4), on top of emphasizing the bold character of the soldier despite his age, evokes an image of an old, forceless man, which fits well with the beginning of the poem, in which the soldier is portrayed as weak and unenthusiastic.
Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois on January 6, 1878. Both his parents were Swedish immigrants that moved to the America because jobs were scarce in Sweden. His father became a railroad worker in Burlington, Chicago and his mother was originally a housekeeper in Sweden and became a housewife in America. His family stayed in America for most of the time and rarely visited Sweden. His family eventually grew and he became the second kid out of seven (EIU). As a child Carl enjoyed visiting the prairie. He never enjoyed school or anything related to literature. He decided at the age of thirteen that he did not want to attend school anymore so he quit school. After this he began to drive a milk wagon. At the age of fourteen until seventeen he worked at the Union Hotel barbershop in Galesburg. Carl loved to work. He was dedicated to his work and serving others. When he turned twenty Carl volunteered to go into the military during the Spanish American War. Although he never actually went to into fighting section he still served as a U.S. soldier. Carl eventually came home. He had no job and was unemployed. Carl began writing short poems when he started West Point University. While he was at West Point he took the math exam and failed it. He went back home within a short amount of time to Galesburg, Illinois and attended Lombard College and still continued writing poems. Although he ...
When a writer starts his work, most often than not, they think of ways they can catch their reader’s attention, but more importantly, how to awake emotions within them. They want to stand out from the rest and to do so, they must swim against the social trend that marks a specific society. That will make them significant; the way they write, how they make a reader feel, the specific way they write, and the devotion they have for their work. Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgard Allan Poe influenced significantly the American literary canon with their styles, themes, and forms, making them three important writers in America.
7. The personification in the second stanza is that she gives poems the ability to hide and are waiting to be found. The author states that poems are hiding in the bottom of your shoes, and they are the shadows drifting across your ceiling before you wake up. This is personification because she gives the poems traits that only a living organism can possess.
The images drawn in this poem are so graphic that it could make readers feel sick. For example, in these lines: "If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs/ Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud,"(21-23) shows us that so many men were brutally killed during this war. Also, when the gas bomb was dropped, "[s]omeone still yelling out and stumbling/ [a]nd flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.../ [h]e plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning."(11-12,16) These compelling lines indicate that men drowned helplessly in the toxic gasses. These graphic images are very disturbing but play a very effective role in the development of the poem.
Personification is an important theme throughout this poem. In lines 1-2 it says, “The mountain held the town as in a shadow I saw so much before I slept there once:.” Also in lines 3-4 it says, “I noticed that I missed stars in the west, where its black body cut into the sky.” This is an example of personification. In lines 5-6 it says, Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall behind which i was sheltered from a wind.” Most of the examples showing personification in this poem, are displayed in the first couple of lines of the poem.
The poem “Snapping Beans” by Lisa Parker is about a girl who visits her grandmother. In the poem, the girl and the grandmother talk about their usual things, like how she is going in school. The girl responds with how school is going good, but she knows that her grandmother would not approve of her social circle and what they do and talk about. The narrator does an excellent job of using imagery and personification to help the reader understand on an emotional level of how the student may be feeling while sitting on the porch with her grandmother. One example of personification in this poem would be: “About the nights I cried into the familiar / heartsick panels of the quilt she made me,” (26-27). This use of personification indicates that the panels of the quilt are heartsick because the girl cries each night into her quilt because she misses her grandmother dearly. In Regina Barreca’s poem “Nighttime Fires, the narrator explains her complex view of her father. Imagery plays a big role in this poem because it vividly illustrates the girl’s impression of her father’s...
The author use personification in the poem because he sees but things will be easier to explain if he uses figurative language. The metaphor comparing to things without using like or as like when she said in the poem ´´ Big ghost in a cloud´ ´ She used metaphor to give a better example of what she sees and what she sees Is cloud shaped as different animals or anything but in the poem she pretty much-seen cloud shaped as the ghost.
Through this research paper, readers could know that poems are implicit in poets’ intention although poems are shorter than any other literature genres. Dylan Thomas and Emily Dickinson used words, which related a dark image in the process of expressing a theme of death. Also, these poets told the emotions of the poets themselves, indirectly or directly. The metaphorical expression is one of figures of speeches. The metaphorical expression are used not their ordinary meaning, but a different meaning as a symbol or image. So, the metaphorical expression enriched poetic expressions in “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “Do Not Go Gentle in to a That Good Night”
Many war pieces express a distinct sense of truth, hatred, and anger that can be found in the style, tone, and imagery they possess. Incredible images are created in ones mind as war writings are read and heard. Works written by such writers as Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Tim OBrien really reach out to the audience by way of the authors choice of words and images that they use in their writing. These talented writers create very touching and heart-felt images as they write about the true occurrences, problems, feelings and emotions that soldiers encountered throughout times of war. It is by way of these writers words that the bloody truth of war is heard, rather than the glorified victories heard which overlook the pain that soldiers went through.
Sandburg pointed to an the intonation of everyday talk to mold his poetry. He also favored free verse as a good way to convey the effects. Sandburg’s poetry was close to being subliterary. His poems tended toward excessively unshaped imitation of reality. Sandburg has a vibrant reputation as a vital poet of the American scene. He uses his poetry and books as a way to portray his views, and greatness of other, people, things, and
One of Emily Dickinson’s greatest skills is taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar. In this sense, she reshapes how her readers view her subjects and the meaning that they have in the world. She also has the ability to assign a word to abstractness, making her poems seemingly vague and unclear on the surface. Her poems are so carefully crafted that each word can be dissected and the reader is able to uncover intense meanings and images. Often focusing on more gothic themes, Dickinson shows an appreciation for the natural world in a handful of poems. Although Dickinson’s poem #1489 seems disoriented, it produces a parallelism of experience between the speaker and the audience that encompasses the abstractness and unexpectedness of an event.
Personally, I realized how Sandburg’s poems still possess a decent amount of significance to the world today. I found each of his poems to be powerful because their theme remained relevant and relatable. Cities are being torn down as well as rebuilt into greater ones worldwide. We have the power to create new life and build empires just as we kill and destroy our surroundings.