of the run on word, “deafanddumb,” shows how closely related these two words are and that society, at the time, viewed them both as the same. It was also what the hierarchy of this nation felt regarding the average intelligence of the common man. Using the clichs, lack of punctuation and a run on word cummings has portrayed a confused speechmaker who has put little though behind his words. In the beginning section of the poem, cummings uses no punctuation except for the quotation marks, an apostrophe and a question mark. This is so the lines run into each other, creating a sense of confusion. The lines in the poem are a collection of clichs that have been used throughout the years describing patriotism for America and are phrases that have been used in everyday life. cummings is discussing feelings towards a nation’s attitude of war, through quotation marks and clichs. It is a difficult to understand why a nation would send troops off to “the roaring slaughter.” This poem suggests the question of whether a country has nothing better for its young men to do than to send them off to die at the hands of a senseless act such as war....
