Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels are both contemporary works of literature that each have their own ideas of the self.
Whitman loves every aspect of the self as well as the nature and world surrounding it because he finds it just as valuable. Swift, however, displays his contempt for the self numerous times throughout his satire. Both of these authors share their opinions of the self in contrasting ways. When Whitman discusses the self, he is celebrating himself, the reader and the universe in a manner that implies we are very close to him. Contrarily,
Swift’s protagonist Gulliver feels absolutely disgusted by mankind and puts himself above his own species. Therefore, it is evident that authors Swift and …show more content…
Interpreting Whitman and Swift’s distinct viewpoints on individualism and their relationship of the individual to the society, their ideas in this regard are polar opposites.
Swift’s ideas about the worth of humans are relatively poor. Swift detests humanity to the point that his satire reflects these views in Gulliver’s Travels. Humans serve no purpose to society other than to ruin it some manner. Swift created the Houyhnhnms to portray that a species that was as honest, productive and functioning as them was only fictional.
It also implies that if a species like the Houyhnhnms were to exist, they would look absolutely nothing like humans. Gulliver always makes it apparent that all humans, including him, could not reach that status. He says, “I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, ‘that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young
Whitman loves every aspect of the self as well as the nature and world surrounding it because he finds it just as valuable. Swift, however, displays his contempt for the self numerous times throughout his satire. Both of these authors share their opinions of the self in contrasting ways. When Whitman discusses the self, he is celebrating himself, the reader and the universe in a manner that implies we are very close to him. Contrarily,
Swift’s protagonist Gulliver feels absolutely disgusted by mankind and puts himself above his own species. Therefore, it is evident that authors Swift and …show more content…
Interpreting Whitman and Swift’s distinct viewpoints on individualism and their relationship of the individual to the society, their ideas in this regard are polar opposites.
Swift’s ideas about the worth of humans are relatively poor. Swift detests humanity to the point that his satire reflects these views in Gulliver’s Travels. Humans serve no purpose to society other than to ruin it some manner. Swift created the Houyhnhnms to portray that a species that was as honest, productive and functioning as them was only fictional.
It also implies that if a species like the Houyhnhnms were to exist, they would look absolutely nothing like humans. Gulliver always makes it apparent that all humans, including him, could not reach that status. He says, “I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, ‘that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young