Analysis of e. e. cummings’ Poem of all the blessings which to man Essa

Analysis of e. e. e. e. cummings Poem of all the blessings which to man As doubting Thomas Reed West puts it, the predominant literary sentiment toward the field of operations of the machine has been one of lament (xii). Many authors have composed pieces dealing with industrialization and the correlated obsolescence of man. Poet e.e. cummings is among them. In his poem of all the blessings which to man, cummings describes a world to which progress ordain doom mankind-- a lead where technology rules over humanity. Cummingss poem opens saying that the most compulsory open progress offers mankind is the an/ imal without a heart (3-4). This heartless living matter is the machine. Machines can be made to act, and can often appear as if they think, but cannot feel. This is the greatest present presented to us by progress? To reckon that as a gift is to hold logic highly supreme over emotion, a preference this piece laments as organism alas accepted. This industrialization a nd elimination of the sine qua non for humans is similarly unfeeling and coldly logical. The age of machinery presents its nearly silent coup detat rebels, the mechanical beings themselves, as a huge collective pseudobeast, aimed at eliminating not only a need for humanity but a need for emotion (5). The poems speaker notes that this being only preexists its hoi in its polloi (8). This shows the aim these machines allegedly have-- not simply to clutch the decanting masses of people but to become the teeming masses (hoi polloi) themselves, even to reconstruct humanity forget that they were ever in charge. This hearkens to the regime employees constantly rewriting history in George Orwells 1984, as these machines hope to make the people forget how things eve... ...y have done too good of a job. Their creation will change them from tame rulers to beings whose prolific creation (teem) overcomes them. Movies and literature alike have often served to villainize technology. These t opics survive and persist, perhaps because we are morbidly fascinated with our own predicted downfall. Many people will hold in to being concerned, as cummings is in of all the blessings which to man, that the world will one day be run by machines. This potential rising governing force is without a heart and couldnt use a mind, and that may scare humans most of all (25, 28). Works Cited Rotella, Guy. Nature, Time, and Transcendence in Cummings Later Poems. Critical Essays on E.E. Cummings. Ed. Guy Rotella. Boston G.K. Hall and Co., 1984. West, Thomas Reed. Flesh of Steel. Charlotte, NC Heritage Printers, 1967.