The poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by ee cummings describes the life of the residents of a small picturesque town, most notably the life of “anyone” and his female counterpart “noone”. “noone” and “anyone” are used by cummings to create a generalization of the main characters in order to tell many stories with one poem. The women and men of the town “cared for anyone not at all”, and instead “sowed their isn’t they reaped their same” (2). This line refers to the adults bearing and raising children because to “sow” means to plant and to “reap” is to harvest. By sowing and reaping the children to be “their same” the children are raised to be without individuality; in other words, they are all alike. In addition, by saying the people of the
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Stanza 4 breaks away from the couple to talk about the rest of the townspeople when it is mentioned that “someones married their everyones” (13). This stanza tells the short tale of everybody else in the town, where they marry, laugh, cry, dance, sleep, wake, and eventually all die. “anyone” dies as well, soon followed by “noone” and the two are buried together. They decompose and become part of the earth by spring, implying they died in winter. The last stanza is similar to Stanza 2, where it mentions the women and men sowing and reaping. However, in this stanza, cummings once again uses hyperbaton to say the people, “went their came” (35). The phrase essentially means the people came into the world and went out of it just as easily. However, by placing “went” at the beginning of the phrase, cummings emphasizes the “went” part of people’s lives, which refers to their death. Stressing death over life shows how cummings believes that life is so repetitive that death comes just as easily as life. The similar elements in the beginning and ending of the poem conclude with the idea that life is a continuous cycle that goes the same way for
Stanza 4 breaks away from the couple to talk about the rest of the townspeople when it is mentioned that “someones married their everyones” (13). This stanza tells the short tale of everybody else in the town, where they marry, laugh, cry, dance, sleep, wake, and eventually all die. “anyone” dies as well, soon followed by “noone” and the two are buried together. They decompose and become part of the earth by spring, implying they died in winter. The last stanza is similar to Stanza 2, where it mentions the women and men sowing and reaping. However, in this stanza, cummings once again uses hyperbaton to say the people, “went their came” (35). The phrase essentially means the people came into the world and went out of it just as easily. However, by placing “went” at the beginning of the phrase, cummings emphasizes the “went” part of people’s lives, which refers to their death. Stressing death over life shows how cummings believes that life is so repetitive that death comes just as easily as life. The similar elements in the beginning and ending of the poem conclude with the idea that life is a continuous cycle that goes the same way for