Unabashed Love and Chicago In the poem Chicago, Carl Sandburg utilizes repetition to express the rampant, and at times annoying, nature of the criticisms of his city of Chicago, but responds to the critics’ dirty, but true, imagery of Chicago by paralleling it with dirty but prideful imagery of the real Chicago, embracing the cities imperfections to evoke the theme that people shouldn’t be ashamed of unique interests or joys. The beginning section of the poem is a series of names for the city and criticisms that the people from the outside looking in have given the city. People who have likely only seen the “wicked,” “crooked,” and “crooked” side of the city dub the city as this awful place (Sandburg 6, 7, 8). Sandburg leads each of these lines with “They tell me” and uses repetition to illustrate the frequent nature of these criticisms he sees. After each, purposely repetitive, criticism Sandburg acknowledges the truth in the statement, but then he decides to “give them back the sneer” and the poem switches to be just that, the city itself baring its teeth towards any critics (Sandburg 9). A peek into the metaphorical form that …show more content…
Sandburg again uses repetition, this time, to argue that its deeply flawed nature makes it “vivid against the little soft cities,” that the critics of Chicago would likely praise (Sandburg 11). It’s at this point where not only does the poem switch from criticism to appraisal, but also the imagery switches from apocalyptic to that akin to a bloody boxing match. Chicago being the “ignorant fighter” with “under his ribs the heart of the people,” laughing at outsiders who don’t know the city saying that it’s too violent for them (Sandburg 20, 21). Those people simply do not understand that’s precisely what makes the city so special, what gives the city its