The Crowd At The Ball Game

The Crowd At The Ball Game: analysis

Introduction

"The Crowd At The Ball Game" looks at a baseball crowd as a single living thing. At first the crowd seems harmless, delighted by play that has no purpose. The speaker even calls it "beautiful".

Then the poem turns. The same crowd is "alive, venomous", and its hostility lands on particular people in the stands. The speaker compares it to "the Inquisition" and "the / Revolution". The poem holds both views at once, the crowd as beauty and the crowd as danger.

Summary

Lines 1–4 describe the crowd as a whole. It "is moved uniformly" by "a spirit of uselessness". This spirit delights the people in it. The crowd acts as one body.

Lines 5–10 describe the game itself. There is "the chase", "the escape", "the error" and "the flash of genius". All of it is "to no end save beauty". The speaker calls that beauty "the eternal".

Lines 11–15 draw a conclusion about the crowd. "So in detail" the crowd is beautiful too. For this reason the crowd is "to be warned against". It is also to be "saluted and defied".

Lines 16–18 describe the crowd, now called "It", in new terms. The speaker says it is "alive, venomous". It "smiles grimly", and "its words cut".

Lines 19–24 show the crowd turning on people within it. "The flashy female with her / mother, gets it". Then "The Jew gets it straight". The speaker calls this "deadly, terrifying" and names it "the Inquisition" and "the / Revolution".

Lines 25–30 return to beauty. "It is beauty itself" that lives in the crowd "day by day", idly. The speaker says, "This is / the power of their faces". The subject of "It" is not made clear.

Lines 31–36 close on the scene at the ballpark. It is summer and "the solstice". The crowd is cheering and laughing "in detail". It does so "permanently, seriously / without thought".

Themes and meaning

The first theme is the crowd as one creature. It is "moved uniformly", and the poem soon calls it "It", a single living thing. Individuals vanish into the mass. Even its pleasure is shared, a "spirit of uselessness" that delights everyone at once.

The second theme is beauty in play without purpose. The game is "all to no end save beauty". Its chases, errors and flashes of genius serve nothing else. The speaker finds this purposeless beauty "eternal". The crowd shares in it and becomes "beautiful" too.

The third theme is the danger of the crowd. The same body is "venomous", and "its words cut". Its hostility falls on "The flashy female" and on "The Jew". The speaker calls this "deadly, terrifying". The comparison to "the Inquisition" links a cheering crowd to persecution and mob violence.

The poem refuses to separate these sides. The crowd is both "to be warned against" and "saluted". "It is beauty itself" that lives in the crowd, and yet the crowd is "without thought". The last lines can be read as praise, as warning, or as both. The ambiguity of "It" in lines 16–25 keeps the two readings together.

Tone

The tone begins as detached and amused. The speaker watches the crowd from above, noting its "spirit of uselessness". The praise of beauty in lines 9–12 sounds sincere.

The tone darkens sharply at line 16. Words such as "venomous", "grimly", "deadly" and "terrifying" bring menace. The speaker sounds alarmed rather than amused.

The close is calmer but uneasy. The crowd is laughing, which is pleasant. Yet it laughs "permanently, seriously / without thought". The pairing of "seriously" with "without thought" leaves the reader unsure whether the speaker admires the crowd or fears it.

Form and structure

The poem has 36 lines in 17 stanzas. The first stanza has 4 lines, and every stanza after it has 2. The lines are short, from 2 to 9 syllables, with no regular metre. It is free verse.

There is no rhyme scheme. The few matches at line ends are repeated words, such as "detail" and "is". Dashes end many stanzas and mark sudden turns. Sentences run across the couplets, so the stanza breaks rarely match the pauses in sense. The quick couplets keep the eye moving, like the crowd's attention.

Poetic devices

paradox line 3

by a spirit of uselessness Uselessness is usually a fault. Here it is the source of the crowd's delight and of the game's beauty.

list line 7

and the escape, the error The moments of the game are listed briskly. The list gives the rush of play in a few nouns.

personification line 16

It is alive, venomous The crowd becomes a single animal. "venomous" suggests a snake and turns admiration into threat.

metaphor line 18

its words cut Words are made into blades. The crowd's jeers cause real harm.

ambiguity line 20

mother, gets it "gets it" can mean receives the crowd's scorn or understands it. Both readings fit the passage.

allusion line 23

It is the Inquisition, the The crowd is compared to a notorious system of persecution. The comparison shows how far its hostility can go.

anaphora line 31

It is summer, it is the solstice "It is" repeats within the line, as it has in lines 16, 23 and 25. The pattern gives the close a steady, stating rhythm.

repetition line 33

cheering, the crowd is laughing "the crowd is" repeats from line 32. The repetition sounds like the crowd's own chanting.

paradox line 35

permanently, seriously The crowd laughs seriously and also "without thought". The contradiction sums up the poem's double view.

Words worth knowing

uselessness

Lack of any practical purpose. Here it is a good thing, the freedom of play.

save

Except. "to no end save beauty" means for no purpose except beauty.

defied

Openly resisted. The crowd must be both saluted and resisted.

Inquisition

A religious court that tried and punished people judged to be heretics. The word stands for organised persecution.

solstice

The longest day of the year in summer. It marks the height of the season.

idly

Lazily or without purpose. It echoes the crowd's "spirit of uselessness".

Context

"The Crowd At The Ball Game" is by William Carlos Williams (1883–1963). It has been on americanpoems.com since 2003 and was a Poem of the Day on March 18, 2008. Readers have left 11 comments on it, from 2004 to 2019.

What readers have said

• The commenter signing as Robert Frost reads the poem as an indictment of herd mentality, with personification showing a mob taking on a life of its own. Robert Frost, 2004
• Rob sees the poem as showing how a crowd can be cruel, whether by discrimination or otherwise. Rob, 2005
• Matt reads the speaker's viewpoint as that of someone above the game, seeing the crowd as one living creature rather than many. Matt, 2006
• Derek Burns glosses the Inquisition in line 23 and suggests the crowd is like it in the way it discriminates and persecutes. Derek Burns, 2008
• Matt Lilly is reminded of Roman crowds kept entertained at the Colosseum so they would not revolt. Matt Lilly, 2008