Carl Sandburg’s Chicago

The meter scratch by Carl Sandburg is a depiction of how the city really looks like. It is a picture not honorable of an imaginary location just now a total imagery of how everyday scratch is. There is an endeavor to elucidate in the readers mind the general description of lolly, as well as the subtle references to specific elements that govern the whole of the poem. Sandburg in addition tries to commend loot in high reverence, with measure to other cities that the readers may give value to.He uses figures of speech to strengthen his presentation of the poem into an appeal one, something that could easily captivate the attention of the readers. Also, very simplistic and ordinary wordings were use that the poem could be grasped in an almost literal manner. The first three lines of Sandburgs poem is a call to the citizens of Chicago, specifically the workmen or the so-called proletarians. He refers to the hog exactlycher, tool maker, wheat stacker, railroad player, and fre ight handler all but the men who do the (literally) dirty jobs in the agricultural, manufacturing, and transportation sectors.Why then was he referring to these men who could be considered of lower status in contrast to the doctors, engineers, or lawyers, or the ones with titles before their names? Perhaps this is a symbolism for the physicality of Chicago. Chicago is considered as stormy, husky, and brawling (Sandburg 1, line 4). It is called the city of the big shoulders (line 5) because of the people that inhabit it. The commencement of in constellaterialization paved way for the generation of many an industries such that the labor force is centralized on what needed strength more construction work, manufacturing work, and the likes.The big-shouldered are indeed the main characters that make Chicago turn, and Sandburgs call to these characters makes an analogy of Chicago in a whole. He typifies this call in the context that personifies Chicago in a way as though he was really talking to it. He used several pronouns, like those in the sixth line They tell me you are wicked and I believe them (Sandburg 1) which relate to they as an allusion of an outside persona and is absent in the conversation you is being referred to the prosopopoeia of Chicago and I is used to depict the poet himself.The pronouns were not only used to illustrate personification, but it is also used to differentiate the personas or characters in the poem. Several other characters used in the poem make believe further imagery, like the painted women (who are prostitutes), the gunman (who killed without being imprisoned), and the women and children (who were marked with hunger) (lines 7, 9, 11). The archetypal industrial city in which large numbers of jobs were available (Koval and Fidel 100) seems not a haven for these people, but still a place for struggle from poverty and its breeds.Sandburg used this irony to give twist to his work that while in that location is wickedness, crooke dness, and brutality in Chicago, he still considers it as proud, alive, strong, and cunning which cannot possible be paralleled by some other city. There is no point in comparing, as Sandburg might mean, in his depiction of Chicago as a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities (line 18). He identifies Chicago as a slugger, a fighter that strikes from side to side in his combat.He also used several words that repeat, if not strengthen, the vividness of Chicago in a macho way fierce, cunning, bareheaded, / shoveling, / wrecking, / planning, / building, wrecking, construct (lines 21-25). There was a sequence in his words, playfully revolving around the process of building and rebuilding, or qualification and unmaking, which connotes further to how a strong character (here, Chicago) undergoes a process of growing.Sandburgs last lines in the poem repeatedly use laughing laughing with white teeth (26), laughing as a recent man laughs (27), laughing even as an ignoran t fighter laughs (28), bragging and laughing (29), and laughing the stormy, husky, brawling jape of Youth (30). In essence, the laughter which he repeatedly used, is symbolic of triumph over the citys languid background. He maintains that there is victory underneath the notions of smoke, burden, and battle.The atrocities felt by Chicago in its experiences of dust all over its mouth (line 26) or the terrible burden of destiny (line 27) cannot thwart away the know success it has in its continual fight for everyday survival. Chicago is juxtaposed to its people the harder their everyday experiences are, the stronger they become. Hawkins-Dady describes Sandburgs work as a conscious work that relates not merely to aesthetic means but which displays historical, economic, and ideological designs (678).Sandburg repeats his first lines at the end part of the poem, but supplying a complete remainder in the tone of the presentation. In the introduction of the poem, there seemed to be a brusqu e, if not antagonistic, characterization of Chicago and its people. Thus, the last lines prove to be a turnaround in the sense that the poem connects laughter in its personification of Chicagos working masses.The turnaround is an effective way of ending the poem since it suggests a positivist point of view, a rather agreeable analogy from dimness to light. The poem Chicago by Carl Sandburg is considered as a piece of work that not only illustrates the intermingling of both simple and complex correlations to Chicagos people, but it also suggests the underlying strength of this city that makes it grow amidst the seemingly muddled background.Sandburg closes his poem in these words Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half- / naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, / Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and warhead Handler / to the Nation. (lines 30-33). With such references to Chicago, Sandburg is definitely saying that he himself is a proud son to the City of the walloping Shoulders.