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Analysis of the poem by ee cummings"maggie and molly..."? can anyone provide an analysis of this poem, of the symbolism and deeper mean be hind each phrase. and the work as a whole. thank you! I need analysis for the poem "maggie and milly and molly and may" by E. E. Cummi ngs. Basically the meaning of the poem, the characteristics of the girls. Any an alysis or links would be greatly appreciated. maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach(to play one day) and maggie discovered a shell that sang so sweetly she couldn t remember her troubles,and milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five languid fingers were; and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone. For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) It s always ourselves we find in the sea. 4 years ago Report Abuse by Don W Member since: August 31, 2007 Total points: 1,168 (Level 3) Add Contact Block Best Answer - Chosen by Voters Here is an analysis of the cummings poem "maggie and milly and molly and may" fr om "Poetry for Students" a Gale reference book. It is a long and thorough articl e, I hope it is helpful. This answer was provided by a librarian in Pittsbugh, PA. Critical Essay on "maggie and milly and molly and may" Critic: Joyce Hart Source:Poetry for Students, Vol. 12, The Gale Group, 2001. Criticism about: E(dward) E(stlin) Cummings (1894-1962), also known as: E(dward) E(stlin) Cummings, E. E. Cummings, Edward Estlin Cummings Genre(s): Travel literature; Novels; Plays; Poetry; Essays

Critics seemed unable to pigeonhole e. e. cummings. He was a man of many moods-some caustic and full of ridicule, others quiet and contemplative. The themes of his poetry were just as likely to be influenced by politics and social affairs

as by sexuality and love. But one recurring theme that cummings seems to have al ways come back to, from the beginning of his career to the end, was his search f or self. And in his search, his poetry appears to have been most heavily influen ced by the philosophy of transcendentalism. It is the individual that transcendentalists celebrate--the individual with the indwelling god, the individual with all knowledge contained, the individual for whom Nature provides symbolic answers. Or as cummings sums it up: 'For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it's always ourselves we find in the sea.' It was during the 1940s, says Norman Friedman in his essay "E. E. Cummings and H is Critics," that critics started to take cummings's poetry more seriously, reco gnizing that cummings had begun to state a more definite view of life in his poe try, and they could see that his "main issue [was] metaphysical." Critics during this time were "beginning to see the central transcendental vision in cummings' work." This does not mean that cummings did not have transcendental leanings be fore this time, but only that his critics were beginning to appreciate his poetr y more; they were able to see past cummings's unusual attempts at defying the st andard rules of grammar, punctuation, and syntax. They were starting to get over their dislike of cummings's literary hijinks (as one critic called them) and we re finding deeper meanings hidden in cummings's words. In the 1950s, when 95 Poems (the collection that included the poem "maggie and m illy and molly and may") was published, critics became even more excited about c ummings's work, now stating that his view of life, as displayed in his poetry, n ot only encompassed transcendentalism but also mysticism. It was as if cummings' s had moved up another rung of the ladder. He became more legitimate, not just a "romantic individualist," says Friedman, but a mature poet. In particular, the poem "maggie and milly and molly and may," says Friedman in another essay in e. e. cummings, The Growth of a Writer, revealed not only a "developed sense of how the transcendental world is involved in the ordinary world" but also that cummi ngs had secured a "grasp of poetic style and technique." So even though there st ill remained a lot of controversy about cummings's poetry, there was a consensus of critical opinion that cummings had tapped a transcendental root. But what is transcendentalism? And how is it reflected in cummings's poetry? One dictionary definition of transcendental is: an adjective that describes some thing that is beyond ordinary or common experience. But the term transcendentali sm became popular in the eighteenth century due to German philosopher Immanuel K ant who believed that the mind contained very important ideas that were not lear ned by the senses through experience but rather were innate in every human being . He believed that every human was born with an all-encompassing knowledge that was contained, in what Kant called transcendental form, in the human faculty ref erred to as intuition. From then on in popular culture, things related to intuit ion were referred to as transcendental. But it was in the nineteenth century in America that the philosophical and liter ary movement referred to as transcendentalism was created. The most prominent au thors associated with this movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Tho reau. Begun as a reform movement in the Unitarian Church, transcendentalism stre ssed the dwelling of God (in the form of inspiration or intuition) in everyone. In addition, the soul of each individual was believed to be identical with the s oul of the world. It contained everything that the world contained. Taking this belief to a deeper level, transcendentalists believed that every natural fact wa s a symbol of some spiritual fact. They believed that children were possibly mor e intuitive than adults because culture had a tendency to corrupt people, as the y grew older. Intuition or insight was held superior to both logical thought and experience in regard to the revelation of the deepest truths. Transcendentalists also believed that the external world and the interior world

of humans were one and the same. What is outside first exists inside human being s in their intuition. But sometimes people are not aware of this intuitive knowl edge and must be reminded of it. And that is where nature comes in. Nature is a living mystery, full of symbolic signs that humans can read. With this concept, the transcendentalists believed that knowing oneself and studying nature were th e same thing. Nature mirrored human psyche. "All that you call the world is the shadow of that substance which you are," wrote Emerson in his essay "The Transce ndentalist." A deeper interpretation of cummings's "maggie and milly and molly and may" can b e easily missed because the poem is very short and is written in a rather uncomp licated couplet form with simple rhyming patterns. But with an understanding of transcendental philosophy in mind, cummings's poem takes on deeper meaning. Beca use of the brevity of the poem, it might be interesting to reinforce the transce ndental elements of the poem by comparing cummings's work with another piece of literature that was published in the same time period. Anne Morrow Lindbergh's G ift from the Sea is a collection of essays that expresses a theme similar to cum mings's poem and was published in 1955 (some years before the 1958 publication o f cummings's collection of poems that contains "maggie and milly and molly and m ay"). Lindbergh wrote the essays while vacationing at the beach, and she uses th e nature that she finds there for self-reflection. Cummings begins "maggie and milly and molly and may" with straightforward writin g: four young girls go down to the beach one day to play. This first couplet pai nts a lovely picture using very uncomplicated words. The image of four young gir ls playing along the shore on a warm summer morning is a gentle image to conjure in one's imagination. The fact that these four young girls all have names begin ning with the letter m could be seen, at first, as a cute way to begin a poem, m aking the poem read almost like a nursery rhyme. The names are fun to say, one a fter the other as the sounds skip over the tongue just as the girls might have s kipped across the sandy shore. But the chances of four young friends (or even fo ur young siblings) having such repetitive-sounding names might make the more-tha n-casual reader a little suspicious. The emphasis on the letter m might give a c lue that cummings is suggesting something--possibly substituting individual name s for the pronoun me. This is, after all, a poem about self-discovery. "For Cumm ings," writes Robert E. Wegner in The Poetry and Prose of E. E. Cummings, "selfdiscovery was supremely important and the only valid motive for writing a poem." Lindbergh begins her book Gift from the Sea in a similar way. The first chapter is a short, simple explanation about her setting: where she is, why she is there , and what she hopes to find there. The setting is, of course, the beach, and sh e is looking for answers in the form of self-reflection. Back to cummings poem, the second couplet introduces maggie. "Maggie," says Rush worth M. Kidder in E. E. Cummings: An Introduction to the Poetry, is the `sweetl y' troubled one." If cummings is talking through maggie, looking at himself thro ugh her eyes, he is saying that when he is troubled, he turns to nature, as tran scendentalists do, to find consolation. Maggie not only finds nature, she also f inds art in the form of music. The shell sings to her. It is through the shell a nd its song that maggie (or cummings) loses the troubles of self. And it is in t he losing, cummings later states in the last couplet, that one finds oneself. In the second chapter of her book, Lindbergh also finds a shell. It is an empty shell that has been abandoned twice--once by the snail-like creature that create d the shell, and then by a hermit crab that used it as temporary housing. It is through this abandoned shell that Lindbergh realizes that she, too, has abandone d her shell: her roles as mother and wife. She, like maggie in cummings's poem, has brought her troubles to the sea, but the shell is reminding her to abandon t hem, if only for this week of vacation, in order that she might reconnect with h

erself. Milly is next to be spotlighted in cummings's poem. "Milly, 'languid' and friend ly," says Kidder, "takes pity on a stranded' starfish." Here there is the possib ility that cummings is saying that sometimes he feels stranded and alone. The "l anguid" fingers of the starfish could be his own hand that might sometimes seem incapable of writing another poem. Through milly and the starfish, cummings migh t see that self-discovery requires making friends with oneself. He could be look ing at the five-fingered ray as an objective part of himself--the public part, t he man as opposed to the artist. And he might be feeling that one part has been stranded from the other. As Wegner states in his analysis of cummings's play cal led Him, "the artist is the man; the man is the artist. Neither, by himself, cou ld achieve individuality and recognition of self, for the artist without the man would be sterile and lifeless, and the man without the artist would misinterpre t what he perceives." This also goes back to the transcendentalist's premise tha t what is inside and what is outside work together, one feeding the other in an attempt to create a balanced life. Wegner goes further in his statement: "Withou t the qualifying temperament of the artist, the man would have little resistance to stereotyped beliefs. With the artist and his inner recognition of truth, bea uty, and harmony, the man through his senses perceives the manifestations of the se in the world around him, and learns to distinguish between what is genuine an d what is sham and hypocrisy." In the third chapter of her book, Lindbergh writes about having found a moon she ll. This shell, by its name, reminds Lindbergh of solitude. As the moon is alone , so are all individuals alone in their journey toward self-discovery. By reflec ting on the shell she comes to appreciate her solitude. It is in solitude that t he artist meditates and creates. And it is through those meditations and creatio ns that the artist befriends herself and then, just as milly befriends the starf ish, the artist is capable of befriending others. Now molly, in the fourth couplet in cummings's poem, is "chased by a horrible th ing" and realizes her fears as she is frightened by a strange looking crab walki ng sideways. Molly most definitely represents the nightmares in cummings's life, or possibly just the challenges that he must face in searching for self-identit y. Cummings might be saying that looking into the mirror of self-reflection is n ot always pleasant. There are parts of oneself that are not always comfortable t o look at. And these uncomfortable parts are one's fears. Lindbergh faces fears at the beach also. She talks about relationships and how t hey work after her sister comes to share one day with her. She watches as they p erform a kind of silent dance throughout the day, knowing each other so perfectl y that they do not intrude into one another's silences, do not bump into one ano ther as they prepare their meals in a tiny kitchen. She also talks about what de stroys relationships. And that is fear. "It is fear . . . that makes one cling n ostalgically to the last moment or clutch greedily toward the next." Clinging an d clutching are, coincidentally, strangely familiar tactics of molly's crab. In cummings's poem, "May is the dreamer," states Kidder, "who in her smooth roun d stone' comes upon a symbol resisting simple categorization . . . this poem sug gests the two sides of loneliness: 'alone' is a quality that looms large in may' s experience, yet, being large, it is hardly a confining and stiffling place." T hese thoughts come from the fifth couplet of cummings's poem where may discovers that the stone she has found is "as small as a world and as large as alone." Cu mmings deals with the concept of loneliness in many of his poems. In looking at loneliness, cummings has often stated that there were two sides to being alone. One was loneliness, but the other was the contemplative state from which creatio n is borne. Immediately following his statement about may and her discoveries ab out loneliness, cummings starts the last couplet with the word for, which in thi s case stands for the word because. As if to explain the reasons for being alone

, cummings ends this poem with his thematic statement. One of the first sentences in the last chapter of Lindbergh's book starts with t he words: "the search for outward simplicity, for inner integrity . . . " As if to emphasize the transcendental nature of her own words (which links this collec tion of essays to cummings's poem), Lindbergh looks out across the beach and the sea and finds the simplicity that she knows she needs to bring inside of her in order to find unity and peace. "We are now ready for a true appreciation of the value of the here and the now and the individual," she continues. "They are the drops that make up the stream. They are the essence of life itself. When we sta rt at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle." It is the individual that transcendentalists cele brate--the individual with the indwelling god, the individual with all knowledge contained, the individual for whom Nature provides symbolic answers. Or as cumm ings sums it up: "For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it's always oursel ves we find in the sea." Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on "maggie and milly and molly and may," Poet ry for Students, Vol. 12, The Gale Group, 2001. Source Database: Literature Resource Center Source(s): "Poetry for Students" Volume 12.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! http://www.schoollink.org/csd/pages/engl/lyricpoe.html Discuss the following themes: the effect of nature self-awareness Analyze the total effect of the poem, including the use of alliteration, assonan ce, and figurative language. Discuss and answer the following questions: Where did Maggie, Milly, Molly, and May go? Why? What did Maggie find? What effect did it have on her? Describe the item that Milly "befriended". Give two details to describe the thing that chased Molly. What item did May bring home? Explain the only capital letter in the poem. Why do you think the speaker choose not to name the "horrible thing" that chased Molly? Explain the last two lines of the poem. What can we infer about the personality of each girl from what she found in the sea?