Nature And Society In Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself

The greatest accomplishment of Walt Whitman is his famous poem collection, “Leaves of Grass”. With its uprising popularity in the 19th century until now, explains and teaches life lessons of the universe and how nature and society should coincide together and be one. The poem “Song of Myself” was one of the twelve poems that were unnamed in his first edition that was printed in 1855. The poem was given the name “A Poem of Walt Whitman, an American” in 1856, and later changed to “Walt Whitman” in 1860. Finally 1881, it was named its final name, as of today, “Song of Myself” to show the evolution and significance of the poem. In the poem, he uses the events and things he has heard of as he explains his take on life and its wonders. He combines …show more content…
The choice of repetition he uses with the words “In vain” in each line as to explain nature failed to do something. With the “mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones” or “the ocean setting in hollows and great monsters lying low” (Whitman), like these enormous monsters that once travelled the Earth, there are still being travelling in its place. The universe, nature and society are changing and forming constantly into new things for every new generation. Could all be “in vain” as Whitman says? Only if ancestors before did not succeed the life that once was, beings that “is in the form of all of us now inhabiting a body” right now can still make a difference. Not only is the “In vain” part used as a rhetoric device of anaphora, but shows how Whitman had use of puns. As he referred to “In vain” it was also literally meant “in our veins”. These veins are a part of the body that “form irregular networks and connect” (Douketis) everything together, it is the blood that connects all things together. Whitman teaches that society and nature learn from the past, and once the present is gone, their experiences will be learned and taught to the