Next To Of Course God America I Poem

In “next to of course god america I” E.E. Cummings uses allusion to direct the reader to his specific ideas. His theme follows different patriotic songs and how people now use them as platitudes rather than believing in and understanding their meaning. The speaker of the poem wants to be seen as a man of the people and very patriotic, but he actually comes off as someone who doesn't know what he is talking about, and the people he is talking to are just blindly listening and believing. E.E. Cummings wants his readers to be more aware of what they say and also become more aware of what they are listening to and how much they should believe. The poem starts out with the speaker talking about his love for the country, next to god of course. He wants to place importance in both so that he covers …show more content…
The speaker in the passage says “we should worry,” (Cummings 5) but his warning is lost in the flood of his political platitudes. The speaker also uses contradictions that lead to senseless babbling in when he says “every language even deafanddumb.” (Cummings 6) He then proceeds to talk about the people he is speaking to and say they are just common people who wont know what he is saying and they will be easily persuaded. The speaker says that men in war got their names thought fighting. He thinks that the soldiers are brave and patriotic for going but that the way they had to do it by violence and with bloodshed ( 7 ). “by jingo by gee by gosh by gum” (Cummings 8) when he says this he is trying to find the right words that he thinks his audience may understand, having a simple audience means they are more easily able to appeal to them as a man of the people. His previous allusion makes him contradict himself, he becomes deaf to his audience and he is speaking to the dumb who cannot