"I am the People, the Mob"
Below is the poem, with analysis at the bottom.

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I am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
   done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
   world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witness history.  The Napo-
   leans come from me and the Lincolns.  They die.
   And then I send for more Napoleans and Lin-
   colns.
I am the seed ground.  I am the prairie that will stand
   for much plowing.  Terrible storms pass over me.
   I forget.  The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
   I forget.  Everything but Death comes to me and
   makes me work and give up what I have.  And I
   forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
   drops for history to remember.  Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
   People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
   forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
   a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
   say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
   sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.

A Student's Analysis

As with most big cities, it seems like there's an "engine" behind the large masses of people.  Sandburg tries to capture this in this poem by describing a perpetual machine that fuels the people and activity in the city.  It gives us the feeling that there's a greater force at work.

It's through the work of all the people that we see things accomplished.  And when one of those people die, they're replaced with another.  It's as if there's a perpetual cycle of mankind.

Again, Sandburg's focused on the people that make up the city.  It seems as though there's an engine that fuels their activity and some outside force that fuels them.

This website is a student project created for the University of Michigan's English 280 class.  Created by Chris Stallman