O'_America

In the poem by e.e cummings, the author conveys the view of patriotism by the use of style, tone, and diction. His viewpoint on patriotism is that people will fight and praise their country but this feeling is so extreme they will die for it. Cummings chooses his words first to convey a positive vision of patriotism. The country is described as “glorious” (7) and “beautiful” (9-10). The word glory conjures up visions of victory over enemies, while the term beauty evokes feelings of love. The poet uses these words at the beginning to show that it is easy to be willing to do anything for our country. But upon the readers deeper reflection, that patriotism is actually killing the real feeling of pride. To convey this meaning, cummings writes that the country’s soldiers “rushed” (11) to their “slaughter” (11) over centuries of war. The word rushed is used here to move faster toward a goal like freedom. But instead of a happy ending, patriots are killed because they have too much love for their country. Therefore, Cummings is commenting that being too patriotic leads to a bad ending. The author does not really keep up the tone to make it sound patriotic. The author writes, “They did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute”(12-13). Having such question like that brings down the tone drastically because if one was to have big, patriotic feeling towards their own country ‘liberty’ would not be deaf nor would one ask themselves. The poet to show that there is no importance in patriotism, he uses different stylistic techniques. First he uses a sonnet, that is upside down! For example, in the first section he writes, “Thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum” (7-8). By the way the sentence is written there is no meaning by who ever gets that pride of patriotism conveying that anyone can get that feeling of being a patriot. Afterwards the poet changes the way of the sonnet. Taking the sonnet to be more vicious and ruthless ending. In lines 12 to 13 cummings writes “They did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute'” The change of the poem adds style to the sonnet to finish questioning their feeling of patriotism. It is a bad ending compared to normal sonnets because this is not a solution but going deeper in questioning. The poem, reveals that with great potential and greatness towards a country, people are proud for what they call their country. One could learn to be a patriot even though knowing that their country has been standing up and many fight for dumb reasons.