Nobody Loses All the Time – EE Cummings
· Theme – nobody loses all the time
· Introduction
1 nobody loses all the time
· Stated as a fact
·
· i – speaker is uneducated, indicates that the
2 i had an uncle named
speaker is not the focus of the poem
· Sol – capitalised to highlight importance within
3 Sol who was a born failure and
the story
· Conversational tone
4 nearly everybody said he should have gone
· Enjambment – succession of failures
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol · Vaudeville – a variety show
5 could · Indicates lower class, uneducated, few talents
· Like Hell Itself – indicates how although Sol can’t
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell
6 Itself which
sing at all, his singing would still be better than
his farming
7 may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle ·
·
8 Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable · Red – extra information
· Verbosity – speaker thinks he is using big words
(luxuries) but he actually isn’t
· Shows how the speaker is uneducated and of the
9 of all to use a highfalootin phrase
lower class
· Highfalootin – shows that the speaker is a
Southerner (USA)
10 luxuries that is or to ·
11 wit farming and be · Wit – needed to be quick thinking and intelligent
12 it needlessly · Needlessly – it is obvious
13 added ·
·
14 my Uncle Sol’s farm ·
15 failed because the chickens ·
16 ate the vegetables so ·
17 my Uncle Sol had a ·
18 chicken farm till the ·
19 skunks ate the chickens when ·
·
20 my Uncle Sol ·
21 had a skunk farm but ·
22 the skunks caught cold and ·
23 died and so ·
24 my Uncle Sol imitated the · Imitated - copied
25 skunks in a subtle manner ·
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