The poem was first published in 1940, at the tail end of the movement known as the “revolt from the village” movement, first described as such by literary critic Anthony Hilfer in a 1969 book by the same name. This literary movement was typified by the novels of Sinclair Lewis and the poetry of Edgar Lee Masters, and is known for puncturing the pervasive mythology that small-town life was free from the crime and corruption that was thought to characterize large, densely populated urban areas.
This myth persists to this day in different forms; "the American dream," for example, takes form in the idea of a nuclear family living at a distance from an urban center. A typical symbolic component of this idea is the white picket fence, meant to keep outsiders out. The "revolt from the village" movement meant to reveal the dull and restrictive nature of these ideals; not only is the American dream all but impossible to achieve, but it calls for a type of isolation that prizes individuality at the cost of having a more interconnected and larger community. The conformity expressed by the bulk of those living in the "pretty how town" described by Cummings shares much with the towns critically described by the “revolt from the village” movement, and the poem digs into its castigation of the residents, though it does so slyly, never quite revealing all of its cards. Not only do the "someones" and the "everyones" represent a homogenous type of population, but they also lack empathy due to their self-centeredness; paradoxically, conforming to a community's norms minimizes empathy because it puts the focus on the self rather than the community.
Cummings' poem is a narrative poem and lacks any straightforward political language or sentiment, but through its description of the town, its inhabitants (who are always being born or dying but never fundamentally change), and the few people who are exceptions to that rule, the poem asks the reader to draw their own conclusions about this sort of life.
