Carl Sandburg’s Chicago is a poetic embodiment of the city that inspired its content. The poem, written during the pinnacle of the cities lifespan in the middle of the great migration, describes the life inside the city, and the people that make it unique and different from the other metropolitan hubs during the industrial revolution. Carl’s inspiration came from the sights he saw during his tenure in the windy city that inspired this great of a poem. Through the use of differentiating stanzas with differing denotations and indirect definitions, pragmatic personification, and through the vibrant exaltation of the common man, Carl Sandburg brings the windy city to life. To start, Sandburg’s uses personification to enact a humanlike visage upon
…show more content…
Continuing, the next lines in the stanza “They” is introduced and “They” seem to be haters of the city. Though “They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.”(6-8) exhibits a malevolent nature to the city, the narrator who is a lover of the city does not disagree with the haters, emphasizing that he has seen all of the horrible things the city has to offer, but later the narrator sneers back to the sneering “They” showing a tough-minded independent vibe which is indicative of Chicagoans. Furthermore the narrator asks “They” to “show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.” again personifying Chicago as it is “singing” and “proud to be alive”. Similarly, the next couple of lines continue to to anthropomorphize the city with phrases like “tall bold slugger” which also reference to the cities early baseball history with the glorious Chicago Cubs who won the world series in 1907 and 1908. Lastly Sandburg ends the stanza with two similes describing Chicago as “Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action”(23) and as “cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness”(23-24). These similes are made to brandish Chicago as fierce, intense and tough like the feral beasts used to describe
Continuing, the next lines in the stanza “They” is introduced and “They” seem to be haters of the city. Though “They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.”(6-8) exhibits a malevolent nature to the city, the narrator who is a lover of the city does not disagree with the haters, emphasizing that he has seen all of the horrible things the city has to offer, but later the narrator sneers back to the sneering “They” showing a tough-minded independent vibe which is indicative of Chicagoans. Furthermore the narrator asks “They” to “show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.” again personifying Chicago as it is “singing” and “proud to be alive”. Similarly, the next couple of lines continue to to anthropomorphize the city with phrases like “tall bold slugger” which also reference to the cities early baseball history with the glorious Chicago Cubs who won the world series in 1907 and 1908. Lastly Sandburg ends the stanza with two similes describing Chicago as “Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action”(23) and as “cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness”(23-24). These similes are made to brandish Chicago as fierce, intense and tough like the feral beasts used to describe