POETRY COMPARISON ANALYSIS 3
justice (Setiawan and Pujiati,). The poem symbolically talks of the rebellion that the American
founding fathers fought against the British colonialists and their rejection of injustice against
African-American slaves. It is against the backdrop of these American ideals that McKay seeks
for justice for the African-Americans in the then Independent America.
The poem “Next to of course god America I” by E. E. Cummings on the other hand
addresses the social issue of war and patriotism. Cummings seeks to address the plight of the
soldiers and citizens who are blindly patriotic to their country (Dylgjeri, 2016). He castigates the
politicians who insight the citizens and soldiers into blind patriotism. According to this poem,
patriotism only serves the interests of the politicians but not the interests of the people who die
fighting for the country during wars. The poet uses satire to express how politicians are creating
the near fanatical patriotism that the political class creates in soldiers and citizens for their own
selfish gains. The poem seeks to address the issue of exploitation in the pretext of patriotism that
politicians are exploiting for political mileages.
The speaker of in the poem is considered as an American congressman who is seeking to
arouse the blind patriotic feeling so that to get citizens to support and go to war zones. The then
American President, Theodore Roosevelt used one of the words that is also found in the poem
“jingo” to inspire extreme American nationalism, a necessity to win people’s support before
going to war (Whelpton). The poem ridicule the fact that leaders only want citizens to go to war
yet they themselves never go to one. The poem therefore seeks to fight against the manipulation
of the citizens and soldiers into bind patriotism in the US by politicians who send them to die in
war fronts.
The two poems were written in the 1920s some years after world war one. In the period
after the World War One when the two poems were written, there was resurgence of extreme
