Fight
Fight - meaning Summary
Violence as Ingrained Appetite
Sandburg’s short free-verse poem confronts violence as an inherited, almost instinctive appetite. The speaker admits recent killing and presents blood as residue that links him to animal ferocity. Violence is not an isolated act but a lineage and a driving pleasure, a physical hunger that sits inside the body. The closing image equates primal craving for nurture with a craving for war, suggesting conflict is as basic and consuming as need.
Read Complete AnalysesRed drips from my chin where I have been eating. Not all the blood, nowhere near all, is wiped off my mouth. Clots of red mess my hair And the tiger, the buffalo, know how. I was a killer. Yes, I am a killer. I come from killing. I go to more. I drive red joy ahead of me from killing. Red gluts and red hungers run in the smears and juices of my inside bones: The child cries for a suck mother and I cry for war.
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