Long Guns
Long Guns - meaning Summary
Power Defined by Weapons
Sandburg’s poem depicts a historical moment when guns determine who controls land and power. Military force supplants moral, natural, and divine laws, becoming the decisive “how of running the world.” The repeated image of ever larger guns and a child wanting the moon shot down registers both collective obsession with technological supremacy and a childlike, violent desire to conquer. The poem warns that political legitimacy has been reduced to brute firepower.
Read Complete AnalysesTHEN came, Oscar, the time of the guns. And there was no land for a man, no land for a country, Unless guns sprang up And spoke their language. The how of running the world was all in guns. The law of a God keeping sea and land apart, The law of a child sucking milk, The law of stars held together, They slept and worked in the heads of men Making twenty mile guns, sixty mile guns, Speaking their language Of no land for a man, no land for a country Unless... guns... unless... guns. There was a child wanted the moon shot off the sky, asking a long gun to get the moon, to conquer the insults of the moon, to conquer something, anything, to put it over and win the day, To show them the running of the world was all in guns. There was a child wanted the moon shot off the sky. They dreamed... in the time of the guns... of guns.
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