22 pages • 44 minutes read
anyone lived in a pretty how town
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Themes
Love in an Uncaring World
One of the poem’s key messages is the power and importance of love, especially in the context of an uncaring, cold, detached world. The poem demonstrates this message through the love story of anyone, a man, and noone, a woman, and through the reactions to their love from the other people in the town. While “[w]omen and men(both little and small) / cared for anyone not at all” (Lines 5-6), noone’s feelings were the opposite: The line “anyone’s any was all to her” (Line 16) suggests that, to noone, the love between her and anyone meant the world. The narrative of anyone and noone shows the positive effects true romantic connection can have on people, drawing a clear line between their meaningful, warm love and the anonymity and indifference between everyone else.
Cummings chooses to make this message universal by using anonymous names like anyone, noone, someones, and everyones. These names illustrate the way that, regardless of time or place, love between two people means something different in private and in public. To the people in a relationship, it gives them meaning, but that love is only understood and recognized by the people in the relationship—outside of it, there is no care for or understanding of the connection. This isn’t necessarily a criticism by Cummings; instead, it’s more of an observation about how humans function. Something that means everything to two people might mean nothing to everyone else. In this way, love is universal while also being deeply personal.
It’s important to note that, even though the poem focuses on anyone and noone, the speaker is clear that this love they feel is not exclusive to them. While their story commences, the speaker notes that “someones married their everyones / laughed their cryings and did their dance” (Lines 17-18), which suggests that love exists elsewhere and outside of the couple too. It is entirely possible that if the poem focused on any of these people’s specific love stories, the narrative would be similar to that of anyone and noone. The point is, though, that there is a certain kind of sadness in the fact that the experience that everyone shares and that gives people meaning and happiness is so personal that it means nothing to anyone else. In that way, love is an ironic thing.
The Cyclical Nature of Time and Life
One of the other aspects of the poem that contributes to a bittersweet reading is how the love between anyone and noone (and really, their entire lives) is just part of a big cycle of time in the universe that goes on and on, repeating with no end and no changes, regardless of who is born, who falls in love, and who dies. Cummings explores this theme mainly through the structure of his poem, as he uses a nursery rhyme rhythm and repetition of words, lines, and structures to match the poem’s content and form to this theme. Perhaps the best example of this is the line “sun moon stars rain,” which repeats three times (though one of the lines reads “stars rain sun moon”). This line and its repetition perfectly encapsulate the cyclical nature of time and nature, as each element in the line is something that exists in fixed patterns that seem eternal to humans. The stars rise and fall every night in predictable order, month to month and year to year. The sun and moon follow their daily patterns, always predictable and always the same. The rain is the only element with some variability, but even rain is fairly predictable, with it being more frequent in the spring and then turning to snow in the winter.
These natural images correspond with the people in the poem and their own life cycles. The people are born, they grow up, they marry, they die. The universe is immune to their charms and indifferent to their happiness or suffering. Even as the people sow and reap (Line 7), nothing in the world changes. The focus on farming imagery adds to this idea of cycles, as even in farming, seeds are planted and harvested in predictable, unchanging patterns, year after year.
Indeed, at the end of the poem, anyone and noone die, and just like every other human, they return to the earth, becoming a part of it. In death, they become part of the cycle, as the speaker demonstrates with exaggerated repetition: “all by all and deep by deep / and more by more they dream their sleep / noone and anyone earth by april (Lines 29-31). And after this final picture of anyone and noone becoming one with the earth (“by april” [Line 31] suggesting the time of their burial, or, more grimly, the time of their decomposition), the lives of the other townspeople continue in this never-ending pattern. Like the ringing of bells (“dong and ding” [Line 33]), like the sun, moon, stars, and rain, the people “reaped their sowing and went their came” (Line 35), doing their short work here on earth, only to eventually return to where they came from.
Loss of Innocence, Growth, and Conformity
While the poem is comfortable acknowledging the cyclical nature of life and the anonymity of love, it also has something to say about the way conformity affects us. This is explored through the dichotomy of anyone and noone’s love and the indifference of the townspeople, especially the children. Anyone and noone’s love gives them meaning and warmth, and there is a tenderness in the depiction of their relationship. And while the poem does not make the case that this love is a rejection of every other aspect of life, it is certainly distinct from the way the speaker describes the other people’s lives, and it is certainly sentimental and romantic.
However, the other people in the town have no care for this lovely thing. Instead, they run about reaping and sowing, never stopping to care about this beautiful love between anyone and noone. There is some care by children, but even they grow up and focus on other things, giving no care to the love anymore. As the bells of time continue to ring, the cold monotony of everyday life replaces children’s innocence. Everyone then settles into the same concerns, toils, and responsibilities, conforming to the expectations of society. They work and seem to do nothing else. The poem demonstrates how this acquiescence to the norms and expectations of social life detaches people from the things that really matter, namely love and connection. Notice, for example, the lines “(and only the snow can begin to explain / how children are apt to forget to remember)” (Lines 22-23). With the passing of the year and the coming of winter, children grow older and forget the whimsies and romantic notions that they once knew. Once the snow melts, they must begin to sow and reap—they must enter the world of work and responsibility.
This change is accompanied by indifference to others, as people’s sole focus becomes the things they must do in order to be a part of society. There is a feeling of loss of innocence here, similar to some of the ideas expressed by poets like William Blake, and even similar to other Cummings poems, like “in Just.” Even the fact that the poem is written with a nursery rhyme rhythm adds to the poem’s childlike wonder, though the subject matter adds irony to the poem, as this whimsical style expresses some serious feelings of existential dread and loss. This is best exemplified after anyone and noone die. The stanza marking their death takes on extra significance when considering the names anyone and noone. Anyone dies, but he might as well be noone because the townspeople can only stop long enough to bury them “little by little and was by was” (Line 28). After this slight disruption, they get back to their lives. Here we see how the expectations of life in society lead people to a kind of coldness where even death is nothing more than a slight inconvenience to routine.
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By E. E. Cummings
