Carl Sandburg's Chicago

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Everyone has an opinion about a certain person, place, or thing. Whether it is a good one or a bad one, it still offends someone, somewhere. In Carl Sandburg's “Chicago”, he states both the ups and the downs of Chicago, and how no matter how bad the city can get, it is still his home. The fact is, home is different to different people. Someone will dislike someone else’s version of home, and someone will like it. An opinion is just that: an opinion. In Sandburg's poem, he writes about many of the qualities the city of Chicago holds, both good and bad. He describes the city as “stormy, husky, brawling”, or in a more modern way, busy, loud, and always moving. Sandburg goes over some of the jobs that take place in Chicago as well. He mentions the judgements about the city by answering…show more content…
Chicago was build as a city in 1833, so it was only seventy years old, young compared to many of the cities around the world. This was why he described the city as a young man; it had been around for quite some time, but compared to the other cities it was young. Using this metaphorical comparison of the city, Sandburg showed how Chicago held many of the same qualities as an immature young man: both vibrant and active, but both also have flaws. Sandburg wants his reader to understand that despite the flaws, there is so much more to admire and to like about the city as it grows. Yet another theme he focuses on is commerce. Chicago is a major city because it is the Midwest hub to the Western states. Before air travel, farmers and merchents took their products both to the west and the east via railway, and anyone going east to west or vice versa almost always would stop through Chicago. Sandburg celebrates the many types of workers that hepled the city grow, from the hog butchers that feed the population to the builders that built the city. He wants the reader to realize that the city is important because it is an example of a vibrantly modern

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