The United Fruit Company Poem Analysis

The poem “The United Fruit Company” itself is considered as a social protest, and the protest topic is the history of inhumane doing of “The United Fruit Company” in the area of Central America. This poem is suitable for the comparison of the formalist way of viewing a poem and the non-formalist approach: it is based on historical facts, but carefully written so if we know nothing we can still understand it.

In the beginning of the poem, “The Fruit Company, Inc.” is paralleled with other big successful companies like “Coca Cola” and “Ford Motors”, they earn so much in the market, as if “the Jehovah” collect all wealth of “the earth” and separate between those companies, another company name “Anaconda” is also listed, but this company is not

The method it used in the area is strange: introducing “Republic” system, under the new system, the people can be categorized into two groups: “the sleeping dead”, and “the restless heroes”, this signals something wrong because people are dying. The ominous signal is repeated again, under “the greatness” of “liberty”, the local residences are “abolished the independencies” by the same group of people, and rules of the great dictator “Caesar” is reinstalled, many “flies” exist and take control under the “tyranny” schemes. The dictators are “flies” because they are from “dead fruit”, where the word “fruit” could be referring to the “Indians”, their value of life is concentrated in the bananas, and the “United Fruit Company” take away those bananas, so the people can be

Several annotations in the Genius.com suggest that these companies and “The Fruit Company” all have similar inhumane connections with Central America, but I think otherwise. According to my research, the firm “Anaconda” is the only one had direct inhumane activities, the company once have mines in Mexico and Chile, it was the largest mining company before it collapsed, the first reason is pollution to the environment: mines generate contaminated water while processing crude ore, Anaconda used to dump these water in the local river; the second reason is that they use the tool of military coup to protect the company’s local interest: in the year 1971, the new president of Chile want to retake the mines under Anaconda’s control, and then there is a military coup, the new military government agreed to pay the company millions for its “expropriated mines”, which proves the relationship between the company and that coup. The Ford Motors have a generally good reputation, but the founder Henry Ford himself is known for Nazi sympathies, so the name here maybe refers to the pro-war attitude or similar idea. As to the Coca-Cola, I cannot find any connections, maybe the name here is to fit the prior lines, “the Jehovah parceled out the earth”, as Coca-Cola is apparently a huge