Because “Spring and All” ends with language and imagery that suggest birth and growth, many readers consider it a hopeful poem that celebrates the first steps toward new life and away from a wintry world characterized by death and decay.

Think about the poem’s date of publication—1923—and the historical events that influenced many modern writers, specifically, World War I. How might “Spring and All” be interpreted as a reaction to the violence of World War 1?

Answer in at least two paragraphs of 5-7 sentences each. Be sure to use Textual Evidence from the poem to support your opinion.

"Spring and All" by William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken