Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

The Irony of Youth In many of his works, e.e. cummings addresses the bittersweet irony and elusive beauty of what

it is to be young – the paradox that is our lives. T.S. Eliot, another influential poet of the

modernist era, captured this paradox perfectly in his poem Little Gidding . Eliot writes that “We

shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we

started / And know the place for the first time” (Eliot, 1942) . It would seem that, at first, we

live so completely in our youth, we are not jaded by a world capable of cruelty. As we age, we

forget how to live without worry or care. On a personal level, an interpretation that resonates

with me is that at the conclusion of one’s life, on reflection, one often finds that the best way

to live is to live as if you are young , that is, treasuring a sense of spontaneous delight and a

youthful spirit. Paradoxically however, there is no life left to live. Cummings addresses this

irony in both anyone lived in a pretty how town 1 and old age sticks 2 , communicating his ideas

through unconventional and unique imagery.

Cummings describes the paradoxical journey of youth in anyone lived in a pretty how town 1 ,

using imagery that defies the laws of grammar, yet somehow seems to connect to the reader on

a more profound level. Cummings alludes to the idea that youth seem to know something adults

don’t. “Children guess” at the meaning of life, coming far closer to being truly happy. Unlike

adults, they do not overthink and they are unafraid to simply live. Children are destined,

however, to lose this intuition as they grow older, an idea which cummings phrases in an

idiosyncratic but powerful and poignant way. The phrase “down they forgot as up they grew”

does not obey the laws of grammar, yet it seems to make perfect sense; with grammar here

serving as a metaphor for the hidebound and sometimes senseless conventions of life itself.

Traditional grammar and phrasing would not be able to capture the sense of these lines. This

rejection of technical correctness in favour of lyrical and individualistic phrasing is

synonymous with cummings’ works. The phrase suggests that every child is bound to leave

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