AND THEY OBEY
By Carl Sandburg [1916] 1 Smash down the cities. 2 Knock the walls to pieces. 3 Break the factories and cathedrals, warehouses 4 and homes 5 Into loose piles of stone and lumber and black 6 burnt wood: 7 You are the soldiers and we command you. 8 Build up the cities. 9 Set up the walls again. 10 Put together once more the factories and cathedrals, 11 warehouses and homes 12 Into buildings for life and labor: 13 You are workmen and citizens all: We 14 command you. |
And they obey is a poem that Carl Sandburg has created, Sandburg fought in the Spanish-American war which influenced his thoughts, afterwards he then had his poems published in a poetry magazine. His attitude towars war was a negative one, influenced by his time at war, his poem is to show that war is not glamorous but terrible.
This poem is a criticism about war, showing us in lines 1-6 that war destroys cities. In lines 8-12 everyone is forced to rebuild what the soldiers destroy, everyone is being commanded to do things. Showing that war destroys things and afterwards the civilians have to labour to rebuild the city. Sandburg uses imagery and assonance in the first 2 lines to make the poem more livid. This poem is about the destruction that war brings and then the hard work that is put into rebuilding after the war. In the poem it starts off by showing the reader that the soldiers are destroying the city and then afterwards the civilians are made to rebuild the city. The poem has a very broad character range e.g. soldiers and civilians. In WW1 a lot of cities were wrecked and then had to be rebuilt. |