Choices
Choices - form Summary
Free Verse, Stark Juxtaposition
Sandburg’s short free-verse poem sets up a blunt contrast between seductive, pleasurable offers and the speaker’s stern alternatives. Using plain diction, repetition, and short declarative lines, the speaker rejects glamour and presents basic sustenance and harsh obligations—"salt and bread," hard labor, and unrelenting conflict—culminating in hunger, danger, and hate. The poem foregrounds moral choice and a willingness to endure hardship over comfortable illusion.
Read Complete AnalysesThey offer you many things, I a few. Moonlight on the play of fountains at night With water sparkling a drowsy monotone, Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk And a cross-play of loves and adulteries And a fear of death and a remembering of regrets: All this they offer you. I come with: salt and bread a terrible job of work and tireless war; Come and have now: hunger. danger and hate.
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