Comparing The Artilleryman's Vision And Letter To His Mother

Walt Whitman, born in 1819, is profoundly known for his later start in poetry. His works primarily focus on his personal experience within the Civil War. His two works deeply reflect his time spent as a nurse for the Union side of the war. Although one being fiction and the other nonfiction, Whitman is capable of getting his tone and ideas across to the reader in both The Artilleryman’s Vision and Letter to His Mother. Both works and their depictions articulate the Civil War experience through differing and similar ideas. Whitman’s works have their primary focus set on the American Civil War. Because of his primary focus on war, his characters are seen to be alike. Both the poem and letter feature Civil War soldiers as his characters. Whitman’s poem, The Artilleryman's Vision, is set with its focus on a veteran of the Civil War “There in the room as I wake from sleep this vision presses upon me; The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal…” (Whitman 76). Alongside his work, Whitman’s Letter to His Mother depicts his viewing of a …show more content…
Based on events detailed within the poem, the speaker can be deduced as a veteran soldier of the Civil War. This idea can be supported by the first line of text within The Artilleryman’s Vision “While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long...” (Whitman 76). From this line, the speaker goes into his past experiences of the Civil War through what he calls “... this vision presses upon me; The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal…” (Whitman 76). In contrast to this, his Letter to His Mother allows the reader to gather Whitman’s view as he is the speaker. Walt Whitman is the speaker, which can be dutifully supported through his depictions of what occurs at the Patent hospital where he worked as a nurse “Here is a case of a soldier I found among the crowded cots in the Patent hospital” (Whitman