Chicago
Sandburg admits Chicago is wicked, crooked and brutal, then dares its critics to name a city more alive, and ends with the city laughing like a young worker.
Chicago the full poem, lines numbered
Chicago first appeared in Poetry magazine in March 1914 and later opened Sandburg’s book Chicago Poems (1916). Instead of neat rhymed stanzas, Sandburg wrote long, loose lines full of work, slang and noise, in the tradition of Walt Whitman. The poem also does something students can use in any argument: it concedes every charge against its subject and still wins the case.
The poem opens by calling the city by its jobs, as if they were titles: butcher of hogs for the world, maker of tools, stacker of wheat, player with railroads and handler of the nation’s freight, a stormy, husky, brawling city with big shoulders. Then the speaker turns to the charges people bring against Chicago. They say it is wicked, and he agrees, because he has seen prostitutes under the gas lamps drawing in young men from the farms. They say it is crooked, and he agrees, because he has seen a killer go free. They say it is brutal, and he agrees, because he has seen hunger on the faces of women and children. Then he faces the people who sneer at the city, sneers back and dares them to show him another city so proud to be alive. The rest of the poem is a portrait of Chicago as a young laborer: cursing, shoveling, building and rebuilding, dusty and laughing like a fighter who has never lost. The last line repeats the opening titles, now as things the city is proud to be.
Speaker & situation
Form & sound
Line by line what each part says and does
- 1
Lines 1–5
The city’s names
The speaker addresses Chicago by a list of titles taken from its work: hog butcher for the world, toolmaker, wheat stacker, player with railroads, freight handler. He adds three adjectives and a last title that pictures the city with big shoulders.
How it worksThe titles are jobs, capitalized like names of honor, so the city’s identity is its labor. “Big Shoulders” (line 5) turns the whole city into a strong worker’s body.
- 2
Lines 6–8
Three charges, three admissions
People say the city is wicked, crooked and brutal. Each time the speaker agrees and gives evidence he has seen himself: prostitution, a killer who goes unpunished, hungry women and children.
How it worksThe concession is the poem’s boldest move. By admitting the worst first, the speaker takes the critics’ weapons away and earns trust for the praise that follows.
- 3
Lines 9–12
Sneering back
The speaker turns to the people who sneer at his city, returns the sneer and dares them to show him a city as proud and alive. He pictures Chicago as a tall, bold fighter set against smaller, softer cities, fierce and cunning.
How it worksThe poem changes from defense to attack. Setting Chicago against “the little soft cities” (line 11) makes other places seem comfortable and weak beside it.
- 4
Lines 13–17
Shoveling, wrecking, planning
A run of very short lines lists what the city does: bareheaded, it shovels, wrecks, plans, builds, breaks and rebuilds.
How it worksThe one-word lines speed up the reading and sound like work. “Building, breaking, rebuilding” (line 17) shows a city that tears down in order to build again.
- 5
Lines 18–23
Laughing
Under smoke and dust, the city laughs: like a young man under the burden of destiny, like a fighter who has never lost, boasting that it holds the pulse and heart of the people. The last line gathers the laughter and returns to the opening names.
How it worksLaughter becomes the city’s answer to every charge. Comparing it to “an ignorant fighter” (line 20) admits that some of its confidence comes from youth and inexperience.
The turn
Lines 9
Lines 6–8 are defensive: the speaker admits each charge. In line 9 he turns away from the city to face its critics and gives them back their sneer, and from then on the poem attacks and celebrates instead of answering.
Literary devices with line numbers
Apostrophe
Lines 1–8 address the city directly, first by its titles and then as “you.” Speaking to Chicago as if it could hear makes the city a living figure the speaker knows well.
Concession
Lines 6–8 grant every charge, with “I believe them” (line 6), “Yes, it is true” (line 7) and evidence of hunger (line 8). Only then does the speaker counterattack in lines 9–10, which makes his praise harder to dismiss.
Personification
From line 11 on the city is “a tall bold slugger,” a young man with a mouth and teeth (line 18) and a wrist and ribs (line 21). The city becomes a laborer’s body.
Anaphora
“And they tell me” begins lines 7 and 8, and “Under” begins lines 18 and 19. The repeated openings give the poem the rhythm of a speech.
Catalog and asyndeton
Lines 13–17 list actions with no joining words, one or three to a line. The list piles up like the work it describes, and the short lines stand out against the long ones around them.
Simile
Line 12 compares the city to a dog lapping for action and to a “savage” in the wilderness; lines 19–20 compare its laughter to a young man’s and an ignorant fighter’s. The word “savage” draws on an old stereotype that many readers now notice and question.
Themes in Chicago
Pride in a flawed place
The speaker loves Chicago without pretending it is good. He admits its crime, vice and hunger (lines 6–8) and is proud of it anyway, because it is alive.
Work and the working body
The city’s names are jobs (lines 1–3), and its portrait is a laborer’s: shoveling, building, sweating, dust on his mouth. Work is what gives the city its dignity.
Youth and energy
The city laughs “as a young man laughs” (line 19) and its laughter is called Youth in line 23. Its confidence is a young person’s, which the poem admits is partly “ignorant” (line 20).
The cost of growth
The same city that builds also breaks (line 17), and the hunger on the faces of women and children (line 8) stays in the poem. Readers differ on whether the final laughter answers that cost or ignores it.
Images and symbols
The big shoulders
Broad shoulders belong to a worker built for carrying loads. The image makes the whole city a strong laborer.
Laughter
The city’s laughter stands for its vitality and defiance. Because it is also called ignorant and bragging (lines 20–21), it can be read as both admirable and naive.
The little soft cities
Other places, pictured as small, comfortable and weak (line 11), the opposite of Chicago’s rough strength.
Tensions
The city vs. its critics. The poem is an argument with the people who sneer (line 9). The speaker’s strategy is to accept the facts they cite and reject their conclusion.
Vitality vs. suffering. The city’s energy and its victims exist side by side. The closing celebration never returns to the hungry women and children of line 8, and readers disagree about whether that is honesty or evasion.
How Chicago ends, explained
The last line gathers the poem together. It picks up the laughter of the lines before it, repeats the three adjectives of line 4, calls that laughter Youth, and returns to the names that opened the poem: hog butcher, toolmaker, stacker of wheat, player with railroads and freight handler. The names come back with two changes. Hog Butcher drops “for the World,” and the nation’s freight handler of line 3 becomes the freight handler “to the Nation,” so the poem ends on the word Nation, and Chicago’s work reaches the whole country. What were titles at the start are now things the city is “proud to be.” The circle is complete, and the city has answered its critics by being more loudly itself. Readers take this ending in different ways. Many hear a celebration of the working city and the laborers who built it, and they admire the poem’s refusal to apologize. Others notice what the ending leaves behind. The gunman, the painted women and the hungry children of lines 6–8 never return, and the final laughter can sound like the brag of the ignorant fighter of line 20. On this reading the poem knows its pride is partly blind and lets that show. Both readings rest on the same choice: Sandburg puts the city’s faults first and its laughter last.
“Hog Butcher for the World,”
“And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.”
“Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.”
“Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,”
Common misreadings
MythThe poem is simple boosterism that hides Chicago’s problems.
ActuallyThe speaker names the problems first: vice, killers who go free, and hunger (lines 6–8). His pride comes after those admissions, not instead of them.
MythThe city is the speaker, talking about itself.
ActuallyThe speaker talks to the city as “you” (lines 6–8) and about it as “this my city” (line 9). The city is personified as a young laborer, but it never speaks.
MythThe poem was first published in Chicago Poems in 1916.
ActuallyIt first appeared in Poetry magazine in March 1914. Two years later it opened Sandburg’s book Chicago Poems, the text printed here.
AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style
Read Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago,” first published in Poetry magazine in 1914. Then write an essay that analyzes how Sandburg uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on the city.
What a strong response notices
- The titles of lines 1–5, which name the city by its work, and their return in line 23.
- The concessions of lines 6–8 and the turn against the critics in lines 9–10.
- The personification of the city as a young laborer in lines 11–21.
- The run of short lines in lines 13–17, ending with building, breaking and rebuilding.
- The repeated laughter of lines 18–23, and the admission that the fighter is “ignorant” (line 20).
Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.
Test yourself
1. Which three charges does the speaker admit in lines 6–8?
Lines 6–8 answer the charges that the city is wicked, crooked and brutal, and the speaker agrees with each.
2. How does the speaker respond to the people who sneer at his city?
In lines 9–10 he gives them back the sneer and challenges them to show him another city so proud to be alive.
3. Which name for the city ends the first stanza?
Line 5, the last line of the first stanza, calls Chicago the City of the Big Shoulders.
4. What does line 20 compare the laughing city to?
Line 20 says the city laughs as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle.
5. Where did the poem first appear?
It was first published in Poetry in March 1914 and collected in Chicago Poems two years later.
Flashcards flip, self-grade, and the deck remembers what you know
Nice work.
This poem is a speech to the city of Chicago. It starts by calling the city by its jobs, like hog butcher and toolmaker. People say Chicago is wicked, crooked and brutal, and the poet agrees, because he has seen crime and hunger there. But then he dares those critics to show him any city that is more alive and proud. He describes Chicago as a strong young worker, covered in dust, building things and laughing. The poem loves the city even though it knows the city’s faults.
Compare & connect
London
Blake walks a city and sees only suffering and oppression. Sandburg sees the same kinds of suffering in Chicago but ends in pride and laughter, which makes the pair a strong study in tone.
London’s Summer Morning
Robinson also builds a city poem out of a long catalog of workers and street life. Her London is observed with calm detail; Sandburg’s Chicago is shouted at, defended and celebrated.
Fog
Fog appears in the same book and shows the city from the opposite side: silent and still, watched from above instead of loud and laboring.
Discussion and essay prompts:
💬 Discussion questions
- What is the meaning of Chicago by Carl Sandburg
- Why is Chicago called Hog Butcher for the World
- What does City of the Big Shoulders mean
- How does Chicago explore the theme of pride in a flawed place?
- How does Chicago explore the theme of work and the working body?
- What is the central conflict in Chicago, and how does it shape the ending?
✎ Essay prompts
- Analyze how Carl Sandburg develops the theme of pride in a flawed place in Chicago. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
- Examine the significance of the big shoulders in Chicago. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
- How does Carl Sandburg use apostrophe to shape the reader’s experience of Chicago?
- Some readers assume that the poem is simple boosterism that hides Chicago’s problems. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.
Key questions students ask
- What is the meaning of Chicago by Carl Sandburg
- Why is Chicago called Hog Butcher for the World
- What does City of the Big Shoulders mean
- What is the tone of Chicago by Carl Sandburg
- What literary devices are used in Chicago by Carl Sandburg
- How does Sandburg personify Chicago
Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from Chicago Poems (Henry Holt, 1916), checked line by line against the page images of that printing. First published in 1914, it is in the public domain in the United States.