19 pages • 38 minutes read

I Am the People, the Mob

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Land

The shift from Line 4’s depiction of the people as the “audience that witnesses history” to Line 5’s statement that they “are the seed ground,” depicts a movement from the urban industrial people to the rural agricultural people. While the vast number of agricultural workers are only mentioned by their being “maker[s] of the world’s food” (Line 3), Line 5 contains a series of agricultural symbols and motifs elaborating on the people’s importance in farming. The relationship between the people and the land they work is so important that they become inseparable. Using the same construction, the speaker uses to state that they are “the workingman, the inventor” (Line 3) and a variety of others, the speaker states they are also “the seed ground” and “a prairie” (Line 5) by way of demonstrating this essential symbolic (and material) connection between the working proletariat and the land.

This connection goes beyond mere equation, as well. “[S]eed ground” (Line 5) refers to the seed-like fruits that plants such as what produce, and more generally the term can be understood to refer to any part of the plant related to propagation. Like the general meaning of “seed ground,” the people are generative and productive, but like the more particular meaning, that productive potential is “ground” like wheat’s seed-like fruits. Similarly, the people symbolic position as a “a prairie that will stand for much plowing” (Line 5) suggests that they are rich and valuable—like a fertile field—despite their ordinary appearance.

“a few red drops”

When the speaker collective states that “[s]ometimes [they] growl, shake [themselves] and spatter a few red drops for history to remember” (Line 6), they are referring to an internal conflict amongst the people that resulted in a war. The “growl” represents an expression of anger or internal frustration. The poem is not clear about the source of this anger, but it is most likely, given the work’s key themes, that the internal violence is motivated by how the people are being treated. This interpretation is further supported by the word “growl,” which is evocative of a cornered animal.

The war itself is indicated by the speaker “shaking” themselves, and the brief mention of “a few red drops” (Line 6) suggests the resulting spilled blood. The “red drops” likely represent whole individuals who have fallen victims to war but are nevertheless expendable in the people's large collective entity, just like a “few” drops of blood.

Death

One of the main deterrents for lower-class revolutions has historically been the threat of bodily harm or death. Sandburg’s poem addresses this concern by loading death with a different symbolic weight. “Death” (Line 5) is depicted in the poem as a potential reprieve from the working-class struggle, at least insofar as it is the only thing that does not proliferate the people’s work. Similarly, death seems to have the ability to make the people, who would otherwise be forgotten by history, remembered. The “few red drops” mentioned above are spilled “for history to remember” (Line 7). Even if, as mentioned earlier, it is the great generals and leaders who tend to be remembered in these wars, they seem to remain a vehicle for the working class to influence history.

Though these internal conflicts are fundamentally destructive—as a revolution would be—they are the only path the poem suggests as a way for the people to be more than “the audience that witnesses history” (Line 4). Because of the poem’s emphasis on the revolutionary “Napoleons and Lincolns” (Line 4), it is logical to assume that revolution would allow a similar historical participation. In this way, the poem recodes the threat of death into something positive and more akin to the glory and reverence one feels for fallen soldiers, thereby making revolution all the more appealing.