Leaves Of Grass Sparknotes

In his magnum opus, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman attempts to fulfill the duties of the American Bard and tell the story of the American people. The American Bard is, according to Whitman, “the equalizer of his age and land” (1012), who speaks for all without bias or exclusions. In the preface to Leaves of Grass, he says, “The American bards… shall be kosmos… hungry for equals night and day” (1016). The Bard will not express bias towards a certain class, topic, or region. Whitman declares, “What I tell I tell for precisely what it is… What I experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition” (1015). As part of his goal to be the American Bard, Whitman asserts in Section 16 of “Song of Myself” that America …show more content…
Almost every noun in this stanza symbolizes some part of America and almost everything can be read in more than one way, allowing Whitman to paint a much larger picture of America than he otherwise would have been able to do. The “place” Whitman repeatedly refers to is likely America itself, regardless of region. The majority of the second stanza is devoted to naming various geographic regions while asserting that every region is equally as valuable to Whitman; he calls himself “A Southerner soon as a Northerner” (6) and says that he is “[a]t home in the fleet of ice-boats… on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch” (11-12). He then declares, “I… am in my place” (20-22). To Whitman, America is the rightful place for all of its residents, represented here by the natural and celestial worlds. “The moth and the fish-eggs” could symbolize the young and the old Americans; while eggs are just beginning their time on Earth, moths have reached the end of their life cycle. The fish-eggs could also allude to the caviar eaten by societal elites, while the moths represent the moth holes present in the clothing of the poor. Furthermore, these tiny creatures could contrast “[t]he bright suns… and the dark suns” (24), with the massive suns representing those with power or prominence while the miniscule animals represent the powerless and those who cannot speak for themselves. The contrasting shades of the suns could also be a more specific reference to racial relations, with the light shade of the bright suns representing white people and the dark suns representing African Americans or People of Color in general. Finally, Whitman says, “The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place” (25). While this could be another