In Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, the author is seamlessly stepping into the shoes of another and identifying himself with their experiences, he also observes them. Walt Whitman does not write this poem as a final stroke to his light-hearted, if not an egomaniacal sense of self, but rather as a celebration of all types of individuals. When Whitman uses the word assume, in his second line, he is not asking the reader to automatically hold all of his statements true to himself, but rather assume them for the reader's self as well as those around them, thus merging all identities of the human race into one. Walt Whitman, with the exclusion of one section of his poem, ultimately describes an America I do not know.
Walt Whitman describes a place …show more content…
When Whitman speaks of the city and how dirty and macabre it is compared to the country; I have to agree. The higher amount of inhabitants in an area, the worse it seems to be. Whitman appears to have the best time when he is alone in the fields. America in its natural state will never change. Nature has no discriminations. I lived in a remote part of Montana for nine years, (the road to my house was dynamited by my father), I was homeschooled, and my closest neighbor was a mile away. It wasn’t until I moved to a city that I experienced hate for my heritage, before that, my mother hadn’t experienced it with such frequency. In the natural state, the blizzards that strike won’t be lesser or worse based on race, the animals that attack have no racial preference, and the air won’t be any colder if your skin is darker or lighter. This type of fairness has yet to exist in a human social construct.
America is not at a point where we celebrate all kinds of individuals, nor do we have the capacity to unite as individuals equal in humanity. The community that Whitman speaks of is foreign to me, the city he mentions has familiar tinges, and the pastoral references are the only parts of America that I wish I knew. Sorry, Whitman, your America that reads borderline to a peaceful pastoral isn’t something I’ve experienced outside the solitude of my own
Walt Whitman describes a place …show more content…
When Whitman speaks of the city and how dirty and macabre it is compared to the country; I have to agree. The higher amount of inhabitants in an area, the worse it seems to be. Whitman appears to have the best time when he is alone in the fields. America in its natural state will never change. Nature has no discriminations. I lived in a remote part of Montana for nine years, (the road to my house was dynamited by my father), I was homeschooled, and my closest neighbor was a mile away. It wasn’t until I moved to a city that I experienced hate for my heritage, before that, my mother hadn’t experienced it with such frequency. In the natural state, the blizzards that strike won’t be lesser or worse based on race, the animals that attack have no racial preference, and the air won’t be any colder if your skin is darker or lighter. This type of fairness has yet to exist in a human social construct.
America is not at a point where we celebrate all kinds of individuals, nor do we have the capacity to unite as individuals equal in humanity. The community that Whitman speaks of is foreign to me, the city he mentions has familiar tinges, and the pastoral references are the only parts of America that I wish I knew. Sorry, Whitman, your America that reads borderline to a peaceful pastoral isn’t something I’ve experienced outside the solitude of my own