Who is afraid of Imprisonment? Alienation and Articulation in Edward Estlin Cummings’ The Enormous Room

Abstract

Set against the backdrop of World War I, The Enormous Room (1922), an experimental autobiography, written by the poet and novelist Edward Estlin Cummings, articulates the writer’s temporary imprisonment in France. The narrator is thrown into the world of imprisonment in which he feels the empty existence of God, and meets the prisoners of various kinds. Having interacted with the prisoners, he realizes the evident polarization between the oppressors and prison victims. In fact, the prisoners’ condition can be compared to Heidegger’s concept of ‘broken hammer’; it refers to a bounded world for the individuals who are judged by certain determinants of the social code of conduct as implemented by those who are in power. The present paper seeks to show how the dehumanizing quality of modern society has been inoculated into the education, religion and others which have reduced the position of the prisoners to others; and it also aims to reveal the narrator’s constant attempt to forge his existence from such nihilistic ambience. So, he challenges the authoritarian power by bringing in wretched syntax, poetic descriptions, and shocking imagery. Thus, his emancipatory potential has come to the fore through his semantic potential which is indicative of his self-discovery and articulation.