Essay/Term paper: Walt whitman

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Poetry

Walt Whiteman though himself out to be the poet of American democracy. His poetry described an america where the future had already begun. Whitman believed every individual had as much dignity, and inmportance as anyone else. No job was considered to small or insubordinate. He believed that in order to reach their full potential, people had to break down the barriers that seperated them from others and from parts of their own being. He enciouraged things that made people less embarassed and mroe outgoing.





Whitman was the kind of poet who follows his own bent, in spite of his misunderstanding. He found supporters among the leading writers of his time and was gradually recognized as the first great poet of new age.



In "i am one of the nation" Whitman wrote, "I am of old and young, of foolish, and of wise, and stuffed with the stuff that is find. One of the natrions the smallest, the same, and the largest, the same."

After reading this, I notice Walt Whitman is talking about being equal. People are all equal and together we make up an equal nation. He also wrote " the runaway slave came to my house, and stepped inside...and went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him, brought him water, filled a tub for his sweated body, and bruised feet, and gave him a room that entered minem and gave him coarse clean clothes. I had him sit next to me at table" This shoes that Walt Whitman believes everyone is equal and deserves equal tretment and respect. He believes in everything he writes about.



In a march in the ranks hand pressed" Whitman says "at my feet more dinstinctlively a so;dier, a meere lad in danger of bleeding to death" when he said this, I niticed he did not say a black man or a white man, he was talking about the solidiers together, as equal indivuduals.

In "when lilacls last in the dooryard bloomed" Whitman wrote this as al elegy. This poem was written in memory of President Lincoln. When Whitman wrote, "the coffin that passes through lanes and streets through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land" I feel he is referring to President Lincoln's death death and the effect it had on the city. The coffin symbolizes the tradegy his death caused the darkness that oasses iver tge city could represent the depression in the people all over the city.

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