The Folly of Mankind

Mankind is foolish. Mankind is ignorant. Most importantly: mankind is forgetful and unlearning. Carl Sandburg shows this in his poem “Grass.” Through the personification of nature, Sandburg suggests that mankind is incapable of learning from mistakes they make, and thus are doomed to repeat the tragic events of history. Sandburg’s use of characterization, tone and chronological events paints a gloomy picture for the future of mankind.

The most important element in defining this theme is Sandburg’s strong use of characterization. He chooses the grass to narrate the poem in first person, and through word choice and repetition, the reader gains a respect for nature. Nature’s unemotional observation of the wars of man forces this respect. Even when faced with great tragedies like Austerlitz and Waterloo the grass only says “Shovel them under and let me work— / I am the grass; I cover all.” (Sandburg, Lines 2-3) By contrast, Sandburg portrays mankind to be ignorant of their own mistakes by saying “Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: / What place is this? / Where are we now?” (7-9) The juxtaposition of the all knowing, all covering grass and the forgetful humans really makes it clear that the reader is meant to sympathize with nature’s plight.

Sandburg chooses to have nature take a very sarcastic and borderline condescending tone while narrating this poem. It seems that nature is becoming frustrated that men are unable to learn from the mistakes that they’ve made and instead just allow the grass to cover up the mistakes: band-aid after band-aid. Just picture the janitor who day after day needs to pick up all of the trash surrounding the trash can, that didn’t make it in the can even though it wasn’t full. “Oh sure, don’t put it in the can. I mean, why bother when there’s a janitor anyway, right?” Grass’s opinion on mankind is very similar. “So, even after all of the dead at Austerlitz and Waterloo, that I had to clean up after, you’re going to forget that and do it again at Gettysburg, and again at Ypres, and again at Verdun.” After all—“I am the grass. / Let me work.” (Sandburg 10-11)

The battles in this poem are listed in chronological order. This is very important. The poem wouldn’t have lost any of its impact if the battles weren’t listed chronologically; however, listing them chronologically brings the theme all together. This poem was written in 1918, just two years after the battle of Verdun. This poem is Sandburg’s way of saying to the world “have you already forgotten Austerlitz? Have you already forgotten Waterloo? Why are we doing this again, so soon?” the line “Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor: / What place is this? / Where are we now?” (7-9) is Sandburg’s way of calling out the rest of mankind. Asking how could you be so ignorant to history? He’s saying: if we let ourselves forget the battles of times past, we’re doomed to repeat them. When is the next Verdun?

The combination of characterization, tone, and historical events in this poem are expertly wrapped up into a theme that presents mankind with nature’s (and Sandburg’s) frustration with the folly of mankind. If humans continue to ignore history, continue to forget previous conflicts, continue to refuse to learn from their mistakes, then they are to be doomed to continuously make the same mistakes, which will result in many unnecessary deaths.

Who and I?

In his poem, “The love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T.S. Eliot opens with the line “Let us go then, you and I.” The meaning of this line dictates the meaning of the entire poem. It wasn’t until the third of fourth rereading of this poem that the true meaning of the line became clear. The poem is representative of an internal debate; the speaker in the poem acts as the ‘I,’ while also acting as the ‘you.’ It may sound confusing, but the device really allows for a great inner look into the psyche of the speaker.

Considering that both the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ represent the same person, they must represent different parts of Alfred’s psyche. Since ‘I’ is obviously the speaking psyche, it’s logical to conclude that ‘I’ is his inner self. Who he wants to be. That fact delegates the ‘you’ to who he really is on the outside. The evidence of this is really apparent in lines 41 and 44. The parentheses are indicative of the ‘you’ back talking the ‘I.’ The inner self is telling the body to go be outgoing, to go and do stuff, to get the chick, while the body debates this command, saying “(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”). The perspective of the ‘I’ changes as time passes in the poem. It changes from the outgoing, adventure seeking inner self, to finally recognizing that he’s too old. Line 125 is a perfect example. Eliot writes: “I do not think that they will sing to me,” not long after he had written “I grow old … I grow old …” This is probably because his outer body was actually correct, and his brain just had never caught up to his age.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is an excellent back and forth debate between one aging man and his own psyche. T.S. Eliot masterfully weaves a tail to allow the reader to peer easily into this debate and gain an insight on what it is like to age.

The First Emperor : Selections From the Historical Records, A review

The First Emperor : Selections From the Historical Records. By Sima Quin with introduction by
Dawson and preface by Brashier (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)

The First Emperor: Selections from the Historical Records was written by multiple authors, none of whom are introduced. Not only are they not introduced, but their first names are not given, so it’s impossible to look them up. At first, this was cause for worry for me. Why would the authors not want their names known? Once I got into the book however, I realized it was likely just an oversight when producing an e-version of the book, as the book was rather well written. It’s unfortunate that I can’t figure out who the authors are, as I’d be interested in reading some of their other works, actually. The exception to this was Sima Quin, who was a renowned scribe in the Qin Empire.

The First Emperor: Selections from the Historical Records covers an excellent selection of Chinese (or really, pre-Chinese history I suppose). It begins with the birth of the first emperor. Covers his rise to power, covers some assassination attempts, the building of the great wall, and then includes a bunch of other supporting information. The book includes, for example, both the annuals of the Qin Empire, as well as thier Treatises. It also includes some other biographies of important players: the chief minister and two important rebels that are credited with bringing down the Qin Empire (Xiang Yu, and Chen Sheng). The Annuals talk a lot about the day to day operations of the Qin Empire, and through that it becomes possible to gain in insight into the daily lives of the government as well as what the government considers important.

I opted to read this book after watching the video on the First Emperor in class. I found it to be rather interesting and entertaining, and also finding a good book to read on serfdom is rather difficult, so I decided to read about China instead. After reading this, I’m likely to change my topic to something related to China, as this was a rather good and interesting read. To be entirely honest, I probably would have enjoyed a watered down version a little bit better. Some of the phrasing in this book was above my level just a tad, and I found myself using not only their supplied references but also a dictionary and Google far more frequently than I would have liked. I can’t really blame the book, because it is selections from Historical Records. The author simply picked which excerpts to include in the book, as well as wrote the preface and some supporting information throughout. The supporting information, while completely required to fully understand what exactly you’re about to read (as every chapter begins with some supporting information) seems a bit short, and I would have benefitted from having more information written in modern times available in the book. However, even considering that fact, being able to read some of the translated time-period writing gives a completely different insight into their time-period and this is invaluable. Some of the other references were also lackluster. The Author fails to explain what exactly Historical Records are, even though he references them throughout. The reader is left to assume that it isn’t explained in an attempt to not insult our intelligence, so I’m inclined to believe that the majority of the text is in fact translated from records of the actual Qin Empire. Also, another minor reference complaint is that the map at the beginning of the book is horrible. If I hadn’t had background knowledge on the topic, the map would have been entirely useless, and even with the background knowledge that I did have, the map was still nearly worthless.

Overall, I must say that The First Emperor: Selections from the Historical Records was a good read. It was not only very informative from what the modern author had to say, but also from a ‘getting inside the minds of the people of the time period’ perspective this read is invaluable. At one point, I wish I could find the page now, they make reference to a law that is being changed and state something to the extent of “And that’s how it will be for this generation, next generation, down to the ten thousandth generation” (Paraphrased from Qian) and just reading that line alone gave such an interesting insight into their minds. These people believed that they would exist forever, and it kind of puts all of their other actions into perspective.