Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago”

Carl Sandburg wrote his most famous poem “Chicago” in 1916 while working for the Chicago Daily News. In the poem, Sandburg transforms the city of Chicago into a living, breathing human being. Through his use of personification he reveals the characteristics and qualities that the city holds: whether good or bad. Sandburg uses many other literary techniques, one in particular being counter arguments. First he reveals the bad qualities that Chicago possesses. “They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.” (6) This line shows the evil and corruption of innocence and the temptation that lies in the city. 

Opposing the evil that Sandburg reveals, he goes on to show the redeemable qualities that Chicago holds. “Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and course and strong and cunning” (10) Sandburg is clear that Chicago acts as a live human being. It is in his way of transforming the city into a person that Sandburg captures the audience, turning Chicago into man.

  Sandburg also uses many similes to show connections and similarities between people and Chicago. “Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness” (12)  His style is particularly powerful and is evident in his use of rhythm in both the beginning of the poem and towards the end. He compares Chicago to the hard working common men that work in its city to show the vigor and energy that it encompasses. 

Edgar Lee Masters- Carl Hamblin

Carl Hamblin starts off with the presumably dead narrator explaining that he was tarred and feathered for wrecking the reputation of the Spoon River Clarion by publishing a story on the day that four anarchists were hanged in Chicago. The short work introduces a beautiful woman standing on a marble temple holding a sword in one hand and a scale in the other. Though she has bandaged eyes, she strikes at people in the crowd, and those that get away from her throw gold coins onto the scale. A man in a black gown reads a manuscript saying "She is no respector of persons" while a crowd member rips the bandage from her eyes. The crowd sees that her eyes are oozing with a white mucus and that her eyelashes are all gone and they understand why she keeps her eyes covered.

Masters uses allegory to represent justice, or injustice, through the beautiful woman. The scale that she holds is often used to represent fair, weighed judgement or balance. The sword symbolizes punishment or enforcement of the law. The fact that she is blind can be seen as something positive, implying that justice is equal for all and blinded from bias. As the story progresses, however, we see that she covers her eyes because they are infected and sick, which symbolizes corruption and evil in the judicial system. "In her right hand she held a scale; Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed by those who dodged the strokes of the sword." The woman manages to avoid striking those who have gold to add to her scale. Those that have money seem to get away without any harm. It seems also that the woman seems to strike on those who are the weakest in society: "She was brandishing the sword, sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, again a slinking woman, again a lunatic." I think that Masters is trying to send out a message stating that though the judicial system's facade seems fair and equal, behind the mask lies corruption and evil.