I Am the People, the Mob

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Power and the Exploitation of the People

“I Am the People, the Mob” depicts a working-class revolution as a constant threat when those workers are exploited. Despite the prophetic turn in the poem’s last two lines, the speaker’s foreseen revolution is mitigated by a few significant factors. First, the speaker collective suggests that the oppressive treatment of the people results in “the best of [them being] sucked out and wasted” (Line 5), and that their effort and work life is commanded by “Everything but Death” (Line 5), and not their own drive and desire to work. The constant demand for labor and the low wages those job earn, in other words, result in a “wasted” populace that has lost their potential to be to be their “best.” The idea, additionally, that “Everything but Death comes to [them] and makes [them] work” (Line 5), also suggests that “Death” is the only foreseeable reprieve from the worker’s vicious cycle of exploitation. These conditions make it difficult for the people to actualize their power as the producers of “all the great work in the world” (Line 2).

Similarly, the great individuals that come from the people are only partially effective. Even the “Napoleons and Lincolns” (Line 4) are temporary measures to improve the status of the worst off, and when their influence wains, more similar individuals are required to be sent forth from the people. While the poem never suggests that the political and economic system is intentionally designed in such a way as to quell the working class, the vicious cycle of exploitation and the need for a constant supply of “Napoleons and Lincolns” suggests a system that is self-correcting towards this kind of class divide.

Memory: Collective and Historical

Another aspect of the cycle of exploitation is the people’s consistent tendency to forget their past. Memory plays a significant role in the people’s exploitation and in the poem as a whole. The phrase “I forget” appears four separate times in Lines 5 and 6, and the people learning how to “remember” and “use the lessons of history” (Line 7) is the first requirement for the mass’s arrival. The speaker collective suggests that attention must be paid to the exploitation in order for the people to realize the full extent of their oppression.

This continual forgetting is connected to, and exacerbated by, the overworked and “wasted” (Line 5) effect of the contemporary industrial worker. It is important, in this context, to note that each repetition of “I forget” in Line 5 is placed after some traumatic or draining force as afflicted the worker, whether it be the “terrible storms” or forces coming to them and making them work. If the people continue to “forget” the slights as they occur, they are never able to recall nor reconcile the full account of their treatment and their place in history.

Historical memory, however, is difficult to grasp. As mentioned in the longer analysis, the working classes are often erased from history. Even if they give their lives and “spatter a few red drops for history to remember” (Line 6), it is often solely the “Napoleons and Lincolns” (Line 4) who are remembered through their efforts. This is why the speaker collective focuses on “the lessons of yesterday” (Line 7), or the individual’s own history, rather than history in a more abstract sense. It is by remembering the small slights, or “who robbed [them] last year, who played [them] for a fool” (Line 7), that the people are able to recognize the extent of their exploitation.

The Great Individual

One confusing, and slightly contradictory, element of Sandburg’s poem is how it works with the “Great Man Theory” of history. This 19th century theory argues that highly influential individuals—almost always men— who have superior abilities, courage, ideas, or divine inspiration almost exclusively make history. This idea is perhaps most clearly seen in the poem’s suggestion that the people are merely “the audience that witnesses history” rather than individuals like “Napoleons and Lincolns” (Line 4) capable of shaping history themselves. Even though these particular men came from the people, and Sandburg uses this connection as a way to make the people seem more significant, it would be a mistake to think Sandburg endorses the “Great Man Theory.”

Rather, at the same time he uses these noteworthy names as a way of inflating the people’s importance, he also deflates the significance of these greats. Napoleon and Lincoln are seen as disposable, almost accidental, and are replaced as a matter of course: “They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns” (Line 4). Juxtaposed to those great men are the people, who the reader is told outright produce “all the great work of the world” (Line 2). Even things as significant as war, which structure history and can result in the death of thousands of great, historical figures, are seen as minor inconveniences to the people. War is simply seen as a “growl,” a “shake,” and “a few red drops for history to remember” (Line 7) from the people’s perspective. The collective of people, in this way, is shown to be exponentially more powerful than the great individuals who are notable for “creating” history.