Grass By Carl Sandburg Analysis

In 'Grass,' Sandburg's speaker encourages the reader to remember the past, especially the parts that are the nigh difficult to face up. He makes several allusion to historical places and events, ones in which many people died unnecessarily. The poem was published afterwards the stop of World War I in 1918 and very clearly addresses the horrors of the previous years. Unfortunately, the "war to end all wars" was not what it seemed to be. WWII was on the horizon, as were countless conflicts and wars around the globe.

The speaker of this poem is revealed at the end of the first stanza. It is not a man just "grass". This technique, which gives grass human being-like abilities, is known as personification.

Grass by Carl Sandburg

Summary of Grass

'Grass' past Carl Sandburg is a deeply moving poem that addresses the horrors of war and human kind'south responsibleness to never forget them.

In the first lines of 'Grass,' the speaker, grass, asks that it be allowed to do its task and cover upwardly the bodies and history soaked battlefields around the world. When its job is completed, no 1, two or ten years from now, will know what happened in these places. It is our task, every bit readers of this poem and people living in the earth to brand certain that we don't forget the lessons of the past.

You can read the full poem here.

Themes in Grass

Sandburg engages with themes of retention/the past, war, and nature in 'Grass'. These themes all come together to paint a picture of human forgetfulness and our want to put the past backside us. But, by forgetting and allowing the grass to cover everything we suffered, we are liable to make the same mistakes over and over. If we had not lost hold of the terrible pain of the Commencement Globe War would anything have changed during the Second?

Structure in Grass

'Grass' by Carl Sandburg is a three-stanza verse form that is separated into one set of 3 lines (known as a tercet), one set of half-dozen (a sestet), and one terminal ready of to lines (a couplet). These lines do not follow a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern, pregnant that they are written in free poetry. This was a common way of writing for Sandburg who wanted his poetry to lean more than heavily on the content and imagery than on the construction of meter or rhyme.

Tone of Grass

'Tone' by Carl Sandburg presents the comments of the grass. Equally it has been hindered in its activities, its tone reflects disdain, disturbance, and distance. The speaker is disdainful for the backwash of war. As well, the speaker is disturbed by bodies that are lying everywhere and demotivate its growth. At last, the magnitude of death doesn't influence the speaker. Information technology seems that "the grass" had been seeing such scenes from time immemorial. For this reason, it keeps his emotions at a distance while talking about dead bodies. At that place is also a tone of indifference and irony in the poem. The ironic tone of the poet is nowadays in most of the lines similar "Shovel them under and let me work".

Literary Devices

Sandburg uses several literary devices in 'Grass'. These include merely are non limited to anaphora, repetition, personification, and allusion. The first of these, anaphora, is seen through the repetition of words at the showtime of multiple lines of text. This is specially effective when the poem is quite brusk every bit this one is. Sandburg uses more repetition when he repeats the phrase "I am the grass" as a refrain.

Personification is i of the more obvious techniques at work in this poem. It is seen through the unabridged narration as the "grass" that grows effectually the world describes its intentions. Lastly, are examples of allusion. It is with this technique that Sandburg is able to make this poem equally meaningful as it is. He alludes to various terrible battles around the world, requiring a chip of knowledge of history (the entire point of this poem) to fully cover his meaning.

Analysis of Grass

Stanza One

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

(…)

I am the grass; I cover all.

In the first line of this poem, the speaker, grass, commands that the bodies pile "loftier at Austerlitz and Waterloo". This is a reference to famous battlefields from the Napoleonic Wars that took place in the early 19th century. The beginning, Austerlitz, is in Austria and the latter is in what is today Belgium. In both of these places, thousands of men died.

The grass, which grows unceasingly is willing itself up and over the metaphorical bodies that still residuum there. They are "Shovel[ed]" under and lost. This is a metaphor for the way that humanity moves on from the horrors of the past as before long as they are out of sight. By taking this position, the grass/Sandburg is really advocating for the contrary. He doesn't want humankind to forget what happened in its bloodiest battles. Rather, he'd like everyone reading to acquire from the by in order to continue it from repeating.

Stanza Two

And pile them loftier at Gettysburg

(…)

What place is this?

Where are we now?

Due to the fact that there are more terrible battles to come, information technology's obvious that the globe did not learn its lesson from the Napoleonic Wars. The next places he mentions are Gettysburg, Ypres, and Verdun. Gettysburg was a battlefield of the American Civil War, located in Pennsylvania. The latter two, Ypres and Verdun, were battlefields of the Showtime World War that Sandburg has merely lived through. The outset is in Kingdom of belgium and the 2d in France. The names of these places should, without detail, bring to mind the wars or battles that occurred on and around them. They should, although they may not, serve as warnings for future generations about what can happen when humanity loses its manner.

The grass makes several other commands, making use of literary devices such as anaphora and repetition. Information technology asks that everyone who died, everything that happened, and all the lessons that should've been learned, be shoveled under the grass and forgotten.

Fourth dimension passes at the end of this stanza and Sandburg reveals the truth of this do of human forgetting. In a brief bit of dialogue, he brings in a scene in which a passenger on a train has to ask the conductor "What identify is this?" and "Where are nosotros now?" These striking questions get to the heart of why it's necessary to call up one's own history.

Stanza Three

I am the grass.

Let me work.

The final stanza of 'Grass,' is indented far into the right. The two lines are brusque, to the point, and both use end-punctuation. The grass wants to "piece of work" and permit history to slip beneath new layers of life. It's our responsibleness to retrieve the past no matter if we can see information technology or not.

Like Verse

At that place is sadly a plethora of wartime poems written by those who served in boxing and by those who suffered in the absence of loved ones. Some of these include: 'The Next War' by Wilfred Owen, 'War is Kind' by Stephen Crane, 'To Any Expressionless Officer' by Siegfried Sassoon, and 'Baronial, 1914' by Vera Mary Brittain. Also, make sure to check out our list of the 10 All-time War Poems Ever Written.