This is seen again towards the end of the poem when Williams writes, " they cry out, failing! failing! their cries rising- (32) Instead of capitalizing the "t" after the punctuation following "failing," Williams rather keeps "their" lowercased to undermine the sufferings" status.
To contend with such enjambments and anarchy to social conventions of poetry, the reader must look at the individual words and its metaphorical meanings. The "sea" (1), which Williams so fervently writes of, describes the sea of faces of those challenged with poverty. It is interesting how Williams uses the word, "too" (2) to explain heavy blows, as if the land partly shields and blinds the affluent from the two-heavy blows of deficiency and the harshness of life that rides on its coattails. Williams writes more of the control that the upper-class possesses when he speaks of the "ungoverned ocean" (3) torturing the biggest hulls, but that the "best man knows" (4) how to pit against their beatings and sinks the waves of the angry mobs "pitilessly," (5) and thoughtlessly. With those lines, one cannot help but attain an exaggerated impression that the wealthy wills can and will suppress any opposition to obtain its goal of acquiring more at the expense of the underdogs. .
To further his theme of status struggle, Williams employs sharp alliteration. He juxtaposes the "brilliance" of "broad bellying sails" (7) to represent the luxurious life of large-bellied fat cats to the downcast sounds of the "broken, and beaten."(30-31) Williams uses the "crew" (9) of the ship to metaphorically describe the desperate. His commanding pair of "crew crawls," (9) intimates again the severity of impoverished life. Instead of such smoother words as marches or walks, Williams decides upon "crawls," which creates an image of the beset crawling and clinging like ants upon a wind-tossed ship. The mere harsh-sounding acoustics of the acute "c" are like pins to the readers" ear.
