An in-depth line-by-line (and further!!) analysis of Nobody Loses All The Time by E. E. Cummings. These notes helped me get 96% for English in my matric finals and I have no doubt that they'll help you too.
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Author:Cummings experimented with poetic form and language to create a distinct personal style
Modernism, surrealism, anti-establishment, existentialism
1.i had an uncle named -from start positioned as loser, pitiful-shown disempowering
lowercase ‘u’
-speaker always himself as lowercase: himself as unimportant
Aphorism-general truth, proverb
What follows is anecodtone/illustration to explain
2. Sol who was a born failure and Context is established. Paradoxical: already written off
-Sol clearly fits into stereotype people want to write off
[challenge society’s definition of success]
-suggests that he was inherently unlucky
Sol: means sun in Latin+Spanish[happy or s out of l]
sun=life giver(biting, sarcastic twist) from moment Sol was
born his fate was to be unsuccessful
3. nearly everybody said he should have gone Most people felt that Sol made bad choices in life. However,
not everyone, showing that he even failed at being a joke
4.into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol He should have gone into slapstick theatre bcs his life was a
could joke. He should have tried to be someone else bcs who he
was not working
v:Type entertainment popular chiefly in US early 20th
featuring mixture of speciality acts e.g.burlesque, song
5.sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Allusion-reference to another piece fo literature
Itself which Christ replaced X: not really follow or respect tradition
Long unnecessary song title.
->Colloquial simile:Sol was a brilliantly terrible singer
6. may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle Apparent fakeness. Pseudo-serious tone. Speaker ponders his
uncles plight
7.Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable Hyperbolic formal language used in line 7,8,9 to ridicule SOl’s
desire to farm bcs he was destined to fail. The speaker is also
showing off being bombastic in terms of his writing
skills[needlessly added:expressions]
8.of all to use a highfalootin phrase Speaker is belittling Sol’s desire to farm as he is known to fail
slang:S American[Highfalootin-pompous/pretentious]
No parenthisis to assist reader with meaning+flow
9.luxuries that is or to Although the product may be luxurious, the process is
certainly not. Speaker is mocking Sol for only picturing the
end product
10. wit farming and be Farming-reap what we sow common analogy
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