a review of e.e Cummings's poem by: Haleh Esmailian

1. “i sing of Olaf glad and big”
CUMMINGS, EDWARD ESTLIN (1894–1962)

2. A very common criticism to Cummings’ works
 Humans inhabiting his poems: Shallow & Immature
“i sing of Olaf glad and big”
Proves it wrong!

3. WITH RAZOR SHARP WIT & BITING SATIRE HE HAS COME TO
CHAMPION AN ENTIRELY NEW KIND OF WAR HERO.
The opening stanza fires a volley straight into the face of tradition.
Parody of opening lines of Virgil’s Aeneid (“I sing of arms and a man”)
The narrator:
hero is a man famous not for feats of
stupendous bloodshed but for his conscientious objection.

4. Cummings’ witticisms
1. THE FORCED RHYME OF “ WAR” :
PARODIES THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE CLASSIC EPICS
2. SEPARATING OUT THE WORD “OBJECT” :
SHOWS THE INHUMAN TREATMENT OLAF RECEIVES FOR HIS BELIEFS

5. Second stanza
1. Several sadistic ordeals
2. Escorted by a West Point- educated colonel
3. Sent to gauntlet of “noncoms”, (noncommissioned officers)
4. Knocked on head
5. Freeze in water
6. Scour with “muddy” toilet brush
7. Strike with “blunt instruments”

6. “kindred intellects”
“Well beloved”
Words like:
satirically questions:
what kind of men, and by extension
what kind of
society, would sanction such brutality.

7. THE WORD “ TRIG” :
Scandinavian word meaning:
1.pleasingly neat, trim, orderly
2.loyal associated with soldiers
Trig can be ironic since:
1. Olaf is Scandinavian & loyal to his word
2. Also specifying colonel’s west point pedigree holds the whole military responsible for ape acts
they do on olaf

8. “noncoms” can have two meaning:
1. Military slang
2. Cummings’ habit of adding prefixes to words,
to create neologistic antonyms like “nonsun” or
“nunword”

9. DESPITE BEING BEATEN TO HALF DEAD OLAF:
1. REFUSES TO FIGHT BACK
2. DOESN’T KOWTOW
3. RESPOND WITHOUT GETTING ANNOYED
(“wanting any rag / upon what God unto him gave”)
shows he was stripped naked
(“being to all intents a corpse”)
Shows he was half beaten to death
Cummings’ message:
Olaf’s
heroism lies not in action, but in his unwillingness to subjugate his
personal ethics to those of the mindless majority.

10. Olaf, Cummings wants to
say:
IS NOT A REBEL WITH A CAUSE, BUT A TRUE PACIFIST WHOSE BRAND OF NOBILITY IS
ASSERTED BY THE USE OF A CAPITAL “I”—AN HONOR THAT CUMMINGS DOES NOT
EXTEND TO HIS NARRATOR.

11. impact of the word “Fuck”

12. The next couplet provides a little comic relief

13. the torment continues in the next stanza
THE USE OF “RECTUM” AND “SHIT” NOT ONLY RESUMES THE SHOCK TREATMENT; IT ALSO HELPS
UNCOVER THE INSULT IN
“FIRSTCLASSPRIVATES.”
after the kicking and screaming, it is the soldiers’
“voices and boots” that are “much the worse” for the wear.

14. IN THE FOLLOWING STANZA
CUMMINGS CARRIES HIS INDICTMENT ALL THE WAY UP TO THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF,
WHO TOES THE LINE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE AND THROWS OLAF IN PRISON, “WHERE HE
DIED.”
NEXT
TO COME UNDER FIRE IS CHRIST HIMSELF, WHOSE “MERCY
INFINITE” APPARENTLY DOES NOT EXTEND TO FELLOW
PACIFISTS.

15. Taking thrust at the military, the
President, and the Savior is over!
None of us are free of guilt, he suggests, if
we stand by
and let this kind of thing happen. And what
is worse, none of us is safe.