Analysis Of 'I Am The People, The Mob'

Despite having been written 100 years apart, the poem, “I am the people, the Mob” (1916) by Carl Sandburg and the magazine journal “The Pitchforks Are Coming... For Us Plutocrats” (2014) by Nick Hanauer both explore the theme of rising social inequality and the tendency for history to repeat itself, often leaving the issue unaddressed, which as both texts suggest has profound consequences. While investigating this theme, both texts demonstrate the immense power of the lower class. However, they approach this common theme from two disparate perspectives and with distinct purposes; while text C instigates the exploited working class to join forces and revolt against the oppression of the plutocrats and admonishes the higher class of the future
In text C, a clear advancement from the use of singular pronouns to collective nouns can be observed. In the beginning, the repetition of the pronoun “I” and the use of anaphora in the first 6 lines, repeating “I am” at the beginning of the lines, underscores the concept of individuality, while towards the end “I” is replaced with collective nouns like “the People” whose capitalization draws attention to it, shifting the emphasis to plurality; this is also reflected in the structure of the poem as while the pronoun “I” is used in the first sentence, in the last sentence it is completely eliminated: “The mob--the crowd-- the mass-- will arrive then” (15). This advancement demonstrates the power of “the people,” when they join forces in order to stand up for the rights that the higher class has deprived them of as when the pronoun
In text C, the tone shifts from forgiving to threatening, which is demonstrated through the juxtaposition of forgetting and remembering; within the first 10 lines” “I forget” is repeated numerous times to demonstrate the fact that “the People” allow history to repeat its course of inequality by simply ignoring the suffering inflicted upon them by the rich. However, in line 11 the poet emphasizes the act of remembering, underscoring the fact that “the People” eventually will “remember... the lessons of yesterday” and take action in response to years of oppression (11). This line marks the shift in tone, from forgiving to threatening, as the poet warns the plutocrats of the near future and threatens them by stating that when people do remember they will take revenge. Through doing so, the poet engenders fear of the future in his readers, which will instigate them to take action. In addition, in text D, the tone shifts from personal to informative to urgent. In the beginning, the personal anecdote about the author not only acts as an attention grabber but also creates a mutual understanding between the author and the audience. After engaging the audience the author appeals to the readers’ logic by using statistics, quotations, and historical precedents to support his argument that if no collective action is taken to reduce the social gap, history would