Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Grass by Carl Sandburg

Grass
by Carl Sandburg
PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174301

TPCASTT Analysis:

T-Title: The title "Grass" predicts that author is incapable like the grass, just attached to the ground, doing nothing.

P-Paraphrase: In this poem, the author tells us that wars happened in Austerlitz, Waterloo, Gettysburg, Ypres, and Verdun. So, dead bodies began to pile up, grass fertilized the dead bodies and the wars are forgotten by people.

C-Connotation:

This poem involves lots of imagery because the author wrote about PILING the dead bodies, shoveling them under the ground and covering all by grass which is a very powerful image in seeing. Also smell of soil and dead bodies is very strong too.

Alliterations of this poem are "And pile them high at," "I am the grass," "Shovel them under and let me work." They are very powerful sentences having meaningful messages.

Personification of this poem is grass because the author personified the grass by saying "let me do work, I cover all." In this poem the grass keep asking the dead bodies to work.

Allusion: This poem is an allusion poem which basically talks about the history. The poem tells us about how time covers all and how the dead people are forgotten over time. This poem mentions a lot about destructed places of war like Austerlitz, Waterloo, and Gettysburg. Now they have been rebuilt and covered with grass.

The rhythm presents in this poem because when the poem powerfully goes on, the poem keeps hesitating at the message "I am the grass; I cover all; Let me work."

The metaphor of this poem is "Grass." "Grass" represents a metaphor for forgotten or disguise of history. The author tells how history like wars are sooner or later forgotten and he points out that history should not be forgotten, but cited like a poem.

Connotation for this poem is "I am the grass; I cover all" which means that history will be forgotten because grass will work and cover all.

Grass symbolizes time. It tells how time covers all, how the dead are forgotten over time.
And places like Gettysburg, Ypres, and Verdun symbolizes the forgotten history and destruction.

A-Attitude: Attitude of this poem is very dark and sad because the poem deals with the forgotten history and human's repeating violence like war. And I also can see author's anger because when he says "What places is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work." These sentence shows author's anger toward the repeated violence and foolishness of human.

S-Shifts: The shifts are "I am the grass; I cover all; Let me work" because when we read this poem these statements make us hesitate reading and think what these sentence really mean. And these shifts affect the poem greatly because they show the feeling of the author like anger, dark, and melancholy.

T-title: At the first time when I read this poem, I thought this poem is about incapability of the author, but actually, it was criticizing people who forgot the past and repeat the same violent things like war. The word "Grass tells us how time covers all, how the dead are forgotten over time." The real meaning of the Grass is "time."

T-theme: Theme of this poem is "those who cannot remember the history are condemned to repeat the same things like the World War I, World War II, etc.

1 comment:

Mrs. Emery said...

excellent analysis Richard!