The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings

First published: 1922

Type of work: Autobiography

Type of plot: Autobiographical

Time of plot: 1917

Locale: France

Principal characters

• E. E. Cummings, an American ambulance driver
• W. S. B., his American friend
• Apollyon, the head of the French prison
• Rockyfeller, ,
• The Wanderer, ,
• Zoo-loo, ,
• Surplice, and
• Jean Le Nègre, other prisoners

The Story:

The poet E. E. Cummings and his friend W. S. B. are unhappy as members of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Service, a unit sent by Americans to aid the French during World War I. One day they are arrested by French military police. From hints dropped during an investigation, Cummings gathers that W. S. B. wrote letters the censor found suspicious. Because they are good friends, both men are held for questioning. They never find out exactly what they are suspected of doing. On one occasion, Cummings is asked whether he hates the Germans. He replies that he does not, that he simply loves the French very much. The investigating official cannot understand how one can love the French and not hate the Germans. Finally, Cummings and W. S. B. are separated and sent to different prisons. Again and again Cummings is questioned and moved from one spot to another, always under strict guard.

Late one night, he is taken to a prison in the little provincial town of Macé. There he is thrown into a huge darkened room, given a straw mattress, and told to go to sleep. In the darkness, he counts at least thirty voices speaking eleven different languages. Early the next morning he meets W. S. B. in the room, who tells him that all the prisoners there are suspected of being spies, some only because they speak no French.

That morning, he learns the routine of the prison. The enormous room is lined with mattresses down each side, with a few windows to let in light at one end. It smells of stale tobacco and sweat. Some of the men in the room are insane, and most of the others are afraid they might become so. The dull routine begins at five thirty in the morning, when someone is sent down to the kitchen under guard to bring back a bucket of sour, cold coffee. After coffee, the prisoners draw lots to see who will clear the room, sweep the floors, and collect the trash. At seven thirty, they are allowed to walk for two hours in a small, walled-in courtyard. Then comes the first meal of the day, followed by another walk in the garden. At four, they are given supper. At eight, they are locked in the enormous room for the night.

There is little entertainment except fighting and conversation. Some of the men spend their time trying to catch sight of women, who are kept in another part of the prison. The poet begins to accustom himself to the enormous room and to make friends among the various inmates. One of the first of these is Count Bragard, a Belgian painter who specializes in portraits of horses. The count is a perfect gentleman, even in prison, and always looks neat and suave. He and Cummings discuss painting and the arts as if they are at a polite party. Before Cummings leaves, the count begins to act strangely and withdraw from his friends. He is losing his mind.

One day, Cummings is taken to see the head of the prison, a gross man he calls Apollyon. Apollyon has no interest in the prisoners as long as they make no trouble for him. He questions Cummings for a considerable time in an effort to learn why the American is there, a circumstance over which the American himself often puzzles.

When new inmates arrive in the room, everyone looks them over with anticipation, some to find a man with money he can lend, some to find a fellow countryman, and some to find a friend. One day, a very fat, rosy-cheeked man arrives. He was a successful manager of a disreputable house, and because he has a large sum of money with him, he is nicknamed Rockyfeller. He hires a strong man to act as his bodyguard. Nobody likes him, for he buys special privileges from the guards.

During his stay in the room, Cummings meets three men, very different from one another, whose personal qualities are such that they make life seem meaningful to him. He calls them the Delectable Mountains, after the mountains Christian found in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678, 1684). The first is the Wanderer, whose wife and three little children are in the women’s ward of the prison. He is a strong man and simple in his emotions and feelings; Cummings likes to talk with him about his problems. One of the Wanderer’s children, a little boy, sometimes comes to the enormous room to visit his father. His pranks and games both bother and amuse the men. The Wanderer treats his son with love and the deepest kind of understanding. Until he is sent away, he remains Cummings’s best friend.

The second Delectable Mountain is Zoo-loo, a Polish farmer who can speak neither French nor English but who can communicate by signs. In a short time, he and Cummings know all about each other. Zoo-loo has a knack for hiding money, and despite the fact that the head of the prison repeatedly has him and his belongings thoroughly searched, he always seems able to produce a twenty-franc note from his left ear or the back of his neck. His kindnesses to Cummings and W. S. B. are innumerable.

The third Delectable Mountain is a little man named Surplice. Everything astonishes him. When Cummings has some candy or cheese, Surplice is sure to come over to his cot and ask questions about it in a shy manner. His curiosity and friendly conversation make everything seem more important and interesting than it really is.

One morning, Jean Le Nègre is brought to the enormous room, a gigantic, simple-minded black man whom Cummings was to remember as the finest of his fellow prisoners. Jean is given to practical jokes and tall tales; he was arrested for impersonating an English officer and sent to the prison for psychopathic observation. The women prisoners call their approval and admiration of his powerful body when he walks in the courtyard. His favorite among the women is Lulu, who smuggles money and a lace handkerchief to him. When she is sent to another prison, Jean is disconsolate. When one of the prisoners pulls at Lulu’s handkerchief, Jean fights back, and a scuffle follows. The guards come, and Jean is taken away for punishment. Calls from the women prisoners arouse him so that he attacks the guards and sends them flying until he is quieted and bound by a fellow prisoner whom he trusts. After that experience, Jean grows quiet and shy.

Just before Cummings is released, W. S. B. is sent away. Jean tries to cheer Cummings with his funny stories and exaggerated lies, but without much success. Although Cummings is afraid that W. S. B. might never be freed from the prisons of France, he later learns that W. S. B. was eventually released. Cummings himself leaves the enormous room knowing that in it he learned the degradation, the nobility, and the endurance of human nature.

Bibliography

Blazek, William. “Artistry and Primitivism in The Enormous Room.” In The Literature of the Great War Reconsidered: Beyond Modern Memory, edited by Patrick J. Quinn and Steven Trout. New York: Palgrave, 2001. This explication of Cummings’s book is included in a collection of essays that apply late twentieth century critical theories to analyze literature about World War I.

Cooperman, Stanley. World War I and the American Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967. Calls The Enormous Room “a carnival in a graveyard” and shows how Cummings avoids conventional rebellion by manipulating language to depict the prison as adding foolishness to tragedy.

Dougherty, James P. “E. E. Cummings: The Enormous Room.” In Landmarks of American Writing, edited by Hennig Cohen. New York: Basic Books, 1969. Maintains that in The Enormous Room, Cummings’s intent was to expose the stupidity and cruelty of wartime governments. Victims are implicitly advised to undergo a process of “unlearning” previously accepted values.

Kennedy, Richard S. E. E. Cummings Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1994. An introductory critical biography that identifies factual bases of The Enormous Room, notes its three-part structure, and details its allusions and correspondences to John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Defines the work’s antiwar and antiauthority themes and its comic-opera descriptions. Lauds Cummings’s preference for feeling, nature, children, and ignorance.

Olsen, Taimi Anne. Transcending Space: Architectural Places in Works by Henry David Thoreau, E. E. Cummings, and John Barth. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2000. Examines The Enormous Room and other literary works in which the authors find a sense of the infinite in unlikely places, altering readers’ perceptions of physical and cultural space.

Russell, John. “E. E. Cummings, The Enormous Room: Jail Journals.” In Reciprocities in the Nonfiction Novel. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000. Russell analyzes Cummings’s book and ten other works that traditionally have not been considered nonfiction novels to create a new definition of the genre. He describes how nonfiction novels differ from works of journalism.

Sawyer-Lauçanno, Christopher. E. E. Cummings: A Biography. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, 2004. A comprehensive biography, in which Sawyer-Lauçanno devotes an entire chapter to The Enormous Room.