PITY THIS BUSY MONSTER, MANUNKIND

By: E.E. Cummings

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:

your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness

—electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born—pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this

fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if—listen: there’s a hell

of a good universe next door; let’s go
 The poem Pity This Busy Monster, Manunkind was a poem written by E.E. Cumming
and was published in 1944. It is poem that has its own style and does not follow traditional way
of writing poem. It is written in a way where it can introduce its 1900’s humor and give
emphasis to the message it wants to convey. This poem is also filled with coined terms and word
morphologies which make the poem more attractive and intellectual.

In criticizing this poem first we have to dissect on the physical form of the poem. The
poem is a 15 lined poem. It has punctuation and sentence structure that is unconventional from
the traditional poem. In traditional way, a line consist of a defined pattern of verse however this
poem does not follow it and is defined to be free versed.

The poem’s line is disorganized, deliberately cutting the sentence in the first line and then
continuing the sentence in the next line giving you a false sense to the message of the line that it
the thought was finished. This style is to give emphasis and humor to the poem. For example in
the first line it said “pity this busy monster, manunkind” it let us feel that we should pity the
monsters however in the next line it continued to a word “not” in which we must revised our
understanding of the message contrary to the first message we thought it conveyed.

The poem is also filled with punctuation, evidently this poem contains a dash line (---) in
which signifies the reader to pause and jump into another thought. An example of this is in the
last three lines where it said “We doctors know a hopeless case if—listen: there’s a hell of a good
universe next door; let’s go” prior to the dash line we were into believe that a doctor has a
diagnosis however it was cut and then the narrator told to come with him to a better place thus
the dash line serves as punctuation to let the reader think to forget about the diagnosis of the
doctor and just come with him to a better place.

This poem is also filled with wordplay and it was introduce at the beginning, the word
“manunkind”. Breaking the word it forms two words “man and “unkind”. Which means the
humanity is harsh and terrible. This word was originally from the word “mankind”, which
denotes humanity as collective beings. Thus the word play becomes a collective beings that are
terrible

Now as we are done analyzing the structure of the poem we have to dwell on the message
of the poem. However, to have a deeper understanding of the poem it would be better to know
the history surrounding the time and place the writer wrote this poem. 1900’s been a century of
scientific discoveries especially in the field of quantum physics and was the time where Albert
Einstein introduced his scientific works. The early years of the century is a prelude to the Second
World War, it was an arms race among the world superpowers. It is a period where people are
busy with progress in science and technology. It is a time where people give importance to work.

In the first line the poem pity this busy monster, manunkind we were set to believe that
we should pity the monsters, being us, however the second line tells us not to pity them and is
continued to described progress, the thing that we are busy to, in a oxymoronic way as a
“comfortable disease”, but it’s not a disease that its life threatening, as it is emphasized in
brackets in the third line. This style adds humor to the poem. The stanza means that progress is
making as terrible person but it also makes us live comfortably. We become attuned to the false
sense of comfort that progress has given us and forget about our humanity, becoming a terrible
person for each other.

The third line seems to tell us of a victim, but it seems that the victim is explicitly
referring to us, in which we can conclude it from the next line in the next stanza that says “plays
with the bigness of his littleness”. This line somehow refers to a negative human trait that we are
so full of ourselves and thinks highly and big about whom we are and what we are, we become
arrogant about our accomplishments but the truth is we are just small part of the society and of
the universe.

The next lines in the stanzas, enumerates the feat that the said progress had brought to
mankind however. Cumming uses metaphors to describe these feats. Making electrons as Godly
creatures we humans worship. Also he uses anaphora to the words unwish and unself to give
emphasis of the negativity of this “progress”.

The next line is also an anaphora of the word world. This is a style to make the text more
beautifully and give emphasis to the difference of the world of born from a world of made. This
refers to natural and artificial things and specifically describes it as very different from each
other.

Then the thought was cut by a dash line and moved into a thought to pity the flesh with
flesh representing humanity, but then the line jumped to the next stanzas in which Cummings
give emphasis that not only with humanity that we should take pity but also of the natural things
around us. However the ending of the stanza gives exception to what he said as to pity humanity,
which give superlatives importance to the word hypermagical and ultraomnipotence this progress
and this humanity had become to worship.

The last three lines concludes the poem pertaining to people who observe the effects of
progress to humanity as doctors, Cumming as one of the doctors, and as doctor who diagnosed
this as a disease suggest to forget about this world and come with them to a better place. But
there is also a wordplay there were he described hell as a better place to go. Thus leaving the
reader to think whether there is a better place than this.

Cumming’s poem is an intellectual poem with many messages hidden in poems structure
and wordplays and attracts the reader’s attention through it use of humor and ironic contradiction
inside the poem, which makes the message of the dehumanizing effect of the way the people are
currently living relevant and “unboringed”.

Prepared by: Irvin Jay P. Quiñones