Humans Versus Capital: The Mill-Race by Anne Winters

In classifying human beings as capital, Winters draws a sharp distinction between the two (that is, what is human versus what is labor and capital) and then immediately blurs this division into disappearance. By setting up these two ideas as so diverse in what they encompass, the readers perceive them more as two overarching themes in opposition with each other. Also Winters employs diction that signifies and us versus them mentality between the two camps; it sets them largely at opposition with one in danger of being “taken altogether” (4). The broad camps painted by Winters of humanity and the mill, the two opposing yet eventually symbiotic ideas of the poem, become evident as larger themes are accented by the diversity encompassed in each category. For instance, in The Mill-Race the mill is at first a water mill, then a paper mill, and eventually a flour and salt mill. The poet is referring to the same subject yet the fact that this mill could seemingly be any type of mill without much effective difference indicates that the important aspect of it is that it is a mill or a system of LABOR (which Winters emphasizes as the only all capitalized phrase in the poem). Likewise, in terms of the human aspects of the poem Winters pays meticulous attention to distinguishing details, ethnicities, attire and other attributes. “White girls... black girls... and some from Easter Island,” Winters initially pays close attention to the individuality of these individuals making up the society of the poem. However, this begins to be “absorbed” as they lose this diversity and become merely a part of the machinery of labor and the generalized mill. 

Interestingly enough, Winters mirrors this shift by at first referring to people as wholes and then referring to their parts “thigh on thigh, waist on waist” in the same manner they would be classified if they were machines (3). Note how above, it was mentioned that labor is the only phrase entirely capitalized in the poem. This is because labor becomes the primary theme of the poem, encompassing of the opposing force of the individuals propelling it as it “churns [them] altogether” making their individualities inconsequential. This statement about the mill and moreover about labor in the form of the poem’s themes mirrors what Winters sees happening in society. This can be summarized in one line from the poem: “Nothing’s really leftover, really, from labor. They’ve taken it all for the mill-race” (4). Thus, labor becomes the all-encompassing camp. It eliminates the need for the ethnically identified restaurants such as “O’Donnell’s, Beirut Cafe, [and] Yonah’s Knish” (4). Furthermore, it fully sucks in all individuals of all ages at all hours, even “the old man at the kiosk starts his late shift,” and as many are riding the bus home from work many others are just on there way (4). All of these characteristics play into the inescapability of labor which Winters accents with the storm occurring in the background to make the picture of life more grim and undeniably owing itself only to labor.