Analysis Of The Enormous Room By E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings’ experiences had a huge impact on his novels and plays, especially his first novel known as The Enormous Room, which was published in 1922. This novel also introduces themes Cummings uses throughout his whole career, such as the individual disregard of any authoritative figure or group. Even though Cummings published the book as an autobiographical novel, he used his satirical voice to mock the military and its actions. Cumming’s four month confinement at a French concentration camp at La Ferte-Mace in Normandy was the basis for the novel. In 1917, he went to France as a volunteer Red Cross ambulance driver, but was soon thought to be an enemy due to his rebellious actions and thrown in the camp (Matthews). Along with writing
The play Him changed Cummings’ perspective on art, using a mirror’s light for an art metaphor (Kennedy). Cummings focused on the different ways the subject could be reflected instead of the actual subject. The play is a tragedy and twisted comedy full of self-doubt and about the journey for self-knowledge before loving someone else. This may be caused by his failed marriage with Elaine Orr in 1926 when she ended it for another man and took their daughter, Nancy, with her to a different country whereas Santa Claus, A Morality indirectly describes Cummings’ reunion with Nancy in 1946. The play can be explained as an allegory in which death and Santa Claus switch personas, ending with a reunion between the young man and his lost child (Kennedy). These themes and attitudes cross over into Cummings’
E. Cummings’ experiences also shape his poetry, creating periods in his poetry that separated his abnormal literary styles. As his career grew his poems became less traditional and more innovative. After Cummings graduated Harvard with his AM degree, he had a collection of poems he named “Index 1916” which mostly included sonnets, ballads, and blank verse (Kennedy). However, his first manuscript of poems was called “Tulips and Chimneys” (1923) that combined both his early traditional and his experimental poems. The subjects of his poems vary from romantic love stories and praise of life to unconventional subjects such as hypocritical politicians and brothels. These subjects were the beginning of Cumming’s move toward realism and naturalism. The manuscript included a poem about the “Cambridge Ladies” which was one of his best known poems (Kirsch). This poem shows the themes introduced in “The Enormous Room”; Cummings mocks Cambridge’s respectability, but his underlying theme was the rejection of family authority as well as family rivalry. Soon after, his travels in Europe introduced him to the Dada and surrealism which influenced Cummings’ poems and is seen in his use of language and illogical methods of expressionism. In some of his poems, the language he uses is invented by combining two words together or by giving a new meaning and in others he uses “words for nouns” (Bloom 89). He gives words such as “yes” meaning and uses them to represent ideas. In 1925, Cummings