You Re On Your Own Kid By Ee Cummings

Sadie DeCoster
1-31-23

“You’re On Your Own Kid”: Symbolism, Figurative Language and Form in E.E. Cummings ❲In Just-❳
E.E. Cummings, in his poem, ❲In Just-❳, uses symbolism, figurative language and a unique form to express the quickness of growing up.
For starters, Cummings uses many different symbols within this short poem to give it a deeper meaning. Some symbols in this poem I feel stand out include spring and the balloonman.
Spring is brought up many times within this poem. Cummings chooses to use the word spring because he is describing a time of change. Spring, in terms of a season, is between winter and summer and it is the time when nature begins to change and come back to life. Although, that is only one meaning of the word spring.

The most prominent form of figurative language within this poem is personification. Cummings creates a man which the reader knows as the balloonman to explain how children lose their innocence. Obviously, one knows that there is no real man whistling to gather children. If this were the case, life would be weird; however, the ominous presence of the balloonman accurately shows how scary it is to grow up. The words used to describe this man include “lame” (line 4), “old” (line 12) and “goat-footed” (line 19). All of which lead the reader to believe that this is an old disabled creature who feeds on taking away the innocence of children. However, I have interpreted it as an older man scaring the children by showing them what they one day will become. By whistling and calling them to him they are leaving their childlike tendencies in the past while they are staring into their futures. Not only this but the author’s symbolism previously talked about are also examples of figurative language used in this

When children work on their studies they typically use their imagination and lack a sense of structure. I feel Cummings is trying to mimic the way a child would write a poem. Cummings uses oddly shaped margins and different indentations for the different stanzas of this poem. There is no obvious pattern when looking at this poem which stands out. I know the form caught my eye, which led me to want to read this poem. Not only is the form Cummings uses odd, but so is the spacing of some of the words within this poem. This is seen with the use of names. Throughout the poem names like “balloonman”(line 4), “eddieandbill”(line 6) and “bettyandisbel”(line 13) lack capital letters or spaces between them. Typically the names of characters are capitalized and separated from one another. Another interesting aspect of the names is the final time balloonman is written the Man is capitalized. This is seen in line 21, “balloonMan”. This is interesting to the reader because none of the other names are capitalized, and man is not typically a proper noun. The final interesting aspect of the words within this poem are with the words “whistles far and wee” (line 5). This is interesting because the word far has a larger amount of spacing between and then wee which is closer to the word and. This is interesting because the word far means extending to a distance