Preview

Analysis of "Chicago" by Carl Sandburg.

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
270 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Analysis of "Chicago" by Carl Sandburg.
In The Poem "Chicago", the poet Carl Sandburg uses personification, diction, and imagery to show his love and pride for his home city of Chicago. In the first stanza "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:"(1-5), Sandburg uses personification to tell the reader how important his city is to the rest of the nation by listing the important jobs done there. The last two lines of the first stanza also allude to the power of Chicago. Another strong element used by Sandburg is diction. The words Sandburg uses to express his feelings about Chicago are powerful and emotional. Sanburg uses strong diction in the second stanza, "They tell me you are wicked.../And they tell me you are crooked.../And they tell me you are brutal"(6-8). In theses lines. Words like "brutal", "crooked", and "wicked" could have all easily been replaced with simpler less emotion evoking words like "bad", but Sandburg wants the reader to feel a stronger connection to the poem and to Chicago its self. Sandburg also uses imagery in this poem to convey his feelings for Chicago. "Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with / white teeth, (20).this is a power full image of someone who is dirty, maybe because of the hardships they have been through, yet is still smiling, happily and showing that they still have some clean untouched part of them selves left inside. Carl Sandburg uses Personification, imagery, and diction in "Chicago" to give people who doubt his city's strength his idea of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Devil in the White City written by Eric Larson is divided into two different stories. One of the Stories tells us about Daniel Burnham and his serious of struggles while trying to conduct and build the greatest fair in the history of the world. The other concurrent story is about another man named H.H Holmes. Holmes is the opposite from Burnham. The author uses diction in order to show us the difference between the two. Not only by the character’s literal actions but the way he expresses them on paper. For example, when the chapter is focused on Burnham the writing style is formal opposed to colloquial. The author does this to show readers that Burnham is a more stable character. Formal writing is very set in stone, which means there aren’t very many sentences that can stick out and surprise you. Much like Burnham actions they don’t surprise you because you know exactly what he is working for. On the other when you are reading about Holmes, you have no idea what he is working for. This is why Larson chose to have a more colloquial diction in those chapters. The form of diction relates to the characters. Formal represents predictable which describes Burnham and colloquial translates into mystery, which translates into Holmes. This makes readers excited to turn pages and find them selves on chapter about Holmes. Another way Eric Larson manipulates language in order to connect to readers is figurative language. Larson makes it so that the hotel that Holmes is in charge of is indeed a metaphor for himself. The hotel is beautiful on the outside. On the inside it is corrupt with murder. This is metaphor for Holmes. Holmes is a well-put together, handsome young man on the surface. In reality we find out that he is mentally unstable and psychopathic. Having the author weave the metaphor within his writing allowed the book to be an eye opener for the real world and made the book much more enjoyable. I believe the…

    • 373 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Millennials have come into a negative light in the eyes of many being blamed for problems in the world today. In Joel Stein’s article entitled The New Greatest Generation he believes they will instead of causing problems bring solutions to them and I agree with him. The millennials are a generation possessing much more resources and technology than any other generation before them by a long shot. The technological advances made from the 1980s to the early 2000 have opened a world of possibilities that millennials will and are taking advantage of to get further in life.…

    • 1107 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I would like to write my research paper about Harold Washington- Chicago. In my paper, I plan to discuss various ways Harold Washington influence the Chicago community and address his achievements. Two components I will focus on achieving in my paper are as follows:…

    • 182 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Brooklyn Cop

    • 904 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The poet uses a simile at the start of the poem, but towards the end of stanza one he changes the comparison to being a metaphor (1 mark). This strengthens the image and emphasises the savage, bestial and primitive nature of the cop. (1 mark)…

    • 904 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The historical nonfiction book The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson provides a comparison between the impressive White City of the Chicago World's Fair and the horror of H.H. Holmes's murder spree. It starts off in 1890 when Chicago finds out it's going to be hosting the World's Fair of 1893. Winning the bid meant so much to Chicago because it indicated that the city would finally be able to shake off the perception that it was a hog-slaughtering, greedy and isolated city. The Fair would create a more positive global reputation for Chicago. Larson argues that it was Chicago’s pride that led its people to dream big enough to win the bid for the World’s Fair. They were motivated to outdo the Paris World’s Fair of 1889, that produced the…

    • 161 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As a person in the United States there are certain rights given to the people such as the first amendment, a law which doesn’t allow rules to be made against freedom of speech and expression. Despite all this, in fiction and reality, rights such as the first amendment have been denied to the people. For a fictional example, there is Fahrenheit 451 which denies people the right to read. In reality, there is an event that took place less than 100 years ago known as the Nashville sit ins where people passively fought for equality. The events in Fahrenheit 451 and at the Nashville Sit Ins have common ground in their basic history and ideals, yet when it comes to the actions they turn out very differently.…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Summer Rain is a longer poem than most others written by John Foulcher, which has messages throughout it. Summer Rain is set on a highway during a traffic jam, an experience many people have experienced. The start of the poem sets the scene economically, informing the reader that it is 4 o’clock and that the cars “clutter on the highway”. This gives the reader a visual image of peak hour traffic on a highway, so they can now almost see what is going on in the poem. Foulcher compares the cars to a familiar object, writing, “clutter on the highway like abacus beads”. This simile gives the reader another important visual image. That is the image of traffic grouping as it slows, and slowly ungrouping as it begins to slowly crawl along again, put simply, bumper-to-bumper traffic. “Cars clutter” is also an example of alliteration. The next line reads, “no one dares overtake”. It is using the strong word dares, instead of just saying no one overtakes, to highlight the danger in trying to overtake while the traffic is grouped and crowded. Foulcher then writes, “Sunlight scrawls through the dust and the fumes, and shadows slap at the edge of the grass”.…

    • 1422 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Constitution Café written by Christopher Phillips is mainly about the viewpoints of students around the country and what could be different about the Constitution. While the majority of the students from the meetings feel like there should be a few things added to the articles of the Constitution, because things are different today than when it was first written in 1787. The book informs the readers on the basics of our rights and understanding more about the Constitution itself. There are many issues discussed such as immigration, justice for all, rights, money matters but I’ll only be going over a few of these issues.…

    • 1102 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Gray - Speech

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In his poem, Flames and Dangling Wire, the first line immediately sets the scene allowing us to have a sense of where we are. The use of a simile in “The smoke of different fires in a row, like fingers spread and dragged to smudge” implies the filthiness of the tip and the smoke rising from the fires. This also causes the air to “wobble”, implying that the horrid stench of the area is visibly seen forming clouds of polluted air to block the sun. He also uses the simile “The city, driven like stakes into the ground”. This shows the unnatural nature of the city with giant buildings artificially implanted into the ground, left there to stand and become eyesores to land that was once full of nature’s beauty.…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    To trace dark emotions upon readers most authors will use the concept of negative diction. For instance, “Harried by day and haunted by night”(Paragraph 11, Letter from a Birmingham Jail). The words “harried” and “hunted” make you feel scared, sick to the stomach. A spine-chilling pity will roam through your body. Allowing no positive emotion to be sense.Negative diction stained murky words into the Clergyman’s mind, making it almost impossible to ignore the action that is required for a resolution The word “devious” in paragraph 14 stained a picture into the reader's mind of something dark, something with no positive side towards it. Negative diction allowed for a reader to feel sad. Never will they feel a beatific sense coming upon them. For an example, “stinging darts” (Paragraph 11) illustrated an image of darts impaled into someone’s skin. Blood dripped down staining the floor old wooden floor red. Tears ran off your check. Pain quenched into your bones. Martin Luther King Jr. demeanor allowed for readers to feel connected with the cruelty towards blacks.. In another case, Martin Luther King Jr utilized polyptoton to stain the paragraphs of Letter from a Birmingham Jail with the same root word, allowing readers to understand what blacks went…

    • 993 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crossing the Swamp

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The entirety of the poem is a metaphor of a man's crisis in life. The first part of the poem, or until "into the black, slack," is dark. This portion depicts the darkness's of life, such as death and the hard ships. The third stanza mentions "…here/ is struggle, / closure --/ pathless, seamless / peerless mud… "which is a reference to life. Life is full of struggles like the struggles one would have trying to cross a swamp. There is no clear path or a person aiding you while you cross the mode, as there is no one to help you through the "hipholes, hammocks" in life. The mans' "… bones / knock together at the pale / joints …" which shows that the man's struggles in life have been long and tedious. The struggle has been so lengthy that it has even begun to wear on the bones and joints in his body. Imagery is used to give the readers feeling of disgust and sorrow. Words such as "mud," "dark blurred / faintly belching bogs" give a negative connotation and make people think of darkness, specifically, the darkness's in life.…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Duality exists in all aspects of the world- in the light of the stars against the dark of the night sky or the vibrant spring colors and the desolation come winter. The dual nature of this world has added deep lines between right and wrong, but of course both will present themselves and both will always, in some way, shape, or form, affect one another. In the Devil in the White City the author, Erik Larson, not only informs the audience about a colossal architectural turning point for our nation, but he entices the reader into a state of jittery tension that is enforced by continuous amounts of alarming duality.…

    • 1249 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    From the 1870’s to the early 20th century Chicago passed through a time period known as the Gilded Age. This was a time of social evolution for many parts of the United States, especially Chicago. Various social problems began to emerge out of this era, but were ignored and covered up. Eventually these problems came to light, and Chicago became renowned for rampant crime and filthy living conditions. During the time of the Columbian Exposition in the early 1890’s these traits became Chicago’s defining characteristics, and people began to view the metropolis as the Black City. In The Devil in the White City, author Erik Larson utilizes primary sources in order to establish Chicago’s reputation that they are trying to overcome.…

    • 896 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There has been a notable change in the American History from the last 400 years until now. At the beginning the American History the subjects that the historians interpreted were politics, diplomacy and war. The only people who could do the interpreting were only white male Americans. The contemporary American historians wrote nearly about everything that affected everybody. This times were very different from what they are now, when you read history, you are reading the historian's point of view or encounter with the world. The historians were fully dedicated to this, they spend hours, days, years of…

    • 850 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One causes and has a major affect on the other. In this case, the use of grotesque initially evokes the reader's feelings of pity towards Charlie and his situation. As the story begins, Charlie, the protagonist describes his father in a delightful way: “He was a big, good-looking man, and I was terribly happy to see him again… I hoped someone would see us together.” Charlie is overwhelmingly happy to see his father whom he hasn't in 3 years. However, shortly after learning this, the reader is hit with a disappointing conclusion about the father's personality. Once the reader realizes why Charlie is not particularly close with his father, they can sympathize with the young boy about what he has to go through. Because Charlie was so excited to reunite with his dad, the fact that he was so let down, upsets the reader and only confirms their original assumption about the father. Another example of pathos that may not be so obvious is when the narrator says, “I followed my father out of that restaurant into another.” This excerpt expresses that the son is trapped; trapped in a traumatic situation, where he has no power stand up to his father and speak his mind. He is stuck following his father's every action, hoping things will change. However they do not. The constant disappointment Charlie endures only causes the reader to develop even stronger sympathetic feelings towards Charlie as well as hatred towards his father. Cheever’s wise word choice also contributes to pathos because certain words spark a feeling within a reader. For example, at the bottom of the last page, the narrator switches from using “dad” to using “daddy” because it is a more powerful and meaningful word. Charlie used the term “daddy” in order to remind his father that he is and will always be his son, while the author uses “daddy” as a final way to emotionally connect the character and the reader. Lastly, the use of first person…

    • 898 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics