James Whitman Vision Analysis

Walt Whitman was one of the greatest poets in American literature. In his works he celebrated the freedom of the individual and the spirit of American democracy. He exalted the common man, the immigrant, the laborer, and the pioneer, he made the occupations of everyday life a subject of native American poetry. His truly original work , Leaves of Grass, was a landmark in both content and style.

These writers and activists are strongly opposed to slavery, and oppression and want to obtain the same rights, social status, and equality as everyone else. They have identical goals that they want to fulfill and are well aware of the controversy that they will not ignore that society has to collaborate to resolve problems and issues in order to unify the nation as one. It is important that all races are treated equally and they must remove the barriers that are preventing freedom. As America develops its culture, these unintimidated activists have similar dreams including Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Charlotte Gilman, Malala Yousafzi, Alice Paul, and Martin Luther King Jr. influence their views of society to promote equality and social change.

During the time period that Walter Whitman lived, there were many controversial things happening to the American people as a whole. One of the most strenuous upon society at the time was the Civil War. The Civil War created many problems in the lives of most Americans during this time period. This war also prompted, and inspired Walt to create many of his historical works of art. The war was raging in both the north and the south during Whitman's golden era of his writing. In the North, the economy was blooming, and growing, and industry was getting better and better each day. While in the South, the price, and the labor of the war was taking its effect upon society. The economy was getting worse, and worse as time went on. The problems

The feelings which I tried to convey in my free verse poem were those of the solitude of the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” as well as her state of sanity and consciousness in relation with the woman in the wallpaper. I wished to convey the fact that the woman in the wallpaper was not merely a separate entity, nor a simple figment of the narrator’s imagination, but rather the reflection of the narrator herself and the deterioration of her mind throughout the telling of the story.

Walter G. Whitman traveled to the East with his family between the years 1925 and 1926. His destination was China, though he spent some time visiting India. Among the places in India he saw were Jaipur and Bombay. He did not linger in India long and there is only a short section in Whitman’s memoir of his time in India. What he did bring back from India was a sizable collection of postcards.

Referring back to “Song Of Myself,” in section eleven Whitman gives the female character an unusual sexual advantage for the time by positioning her as a voyeur, watching the naked men bathe. Typically throughout history men have always been the watchers of multiple women. The “Male Gaze” is a theory that women in the public sphere have always been “objects of male pleasure”, coined by Laura Mulvey in her essay, “Narrative Cinema and Visual Pleasure” (Soloway) . In contrast the “Female Gaze” does the opposite and portrays men in manner that makes them “objects of female pleasure”. More than one hundred years before these terms were coined, Whitman subversively explored ideas of feminine desires and sexuality.

In parting with traditional poetic formalities, Walt Whitman alleviated a burden that impeded his ability to achieve full poetic expression. To Whitman, the strict boundaries that formal meter, structure, and rhyme imposed set limits on his stylistic freedom. This is not to say that these limits prevented Whitman from conveying his themes. Rather, they presented a contradiction to which Whitman refused to conform. In Whitman’s eyes, to meet these formal guidelines one would also have to sacrifice the ability to express qualities and passion of living men. Thus, Whitman contested traditional poetic protocol because it added a layer of superficiality that concerned itself with creating perfect rhythmical, metrical,

Walt Whitman writes poems with a democratic matter. His writings are what makes him not unique. His faith lowered from the civil war. The style of his writing stays consistent and he doesn't change how he writes. He uses few metaphors, other symbolic language, and anecdotes. His goal is for the reader to have a sympathetic experience while reading. He wants the read wrong to have this experience to relate to themselves. He often uses obscure, foreign, or invented words throughout his writings. He has a unique individuality. A lot of Whitman’s writings explain that others will not be understood no matter what we try or how hard we try. He often stays away from rhyme schemes and even poetic devices. He does although use meter.

Whitman's poem "Song of Myself #44" stands as a confession and testaments of not only who he is and what he is, but also as who we are, we being people in general. The poem is not about a self-idolizing author claiming to be the greatest being of all time. Instead it paints a picture for all mankind alike to relate to. It puts a mirror in front of the world and presents an angle of an image that, though familiar, we have never seen or realized before.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German writer, once said, “One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.” Rebelling against society is an act an individual can do in order to find independence within themselves. Poet, Walt Whitman, in his poem “Song of Myself” from the collection Leaves of Grass (1855), emphasizes the notion of equality of all individuals in the universe, as witnessed in the setting of the cemetery. Whitman’s purpose for composing his poem was to provide his readers counsel about finding their own journey. Reinforced ideas were depicted in Mark Twain’s satiric, bildungsroman, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), as the 14 year old protagonist, Huck, exposes the hypocrisy of white society’s morals during his childhood in the Antebellum South. Lambasting racism, slavery, and the hypocrisy of white society, the novelist reveals their corruption during the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Civil War expert, James McPherson, in his nonfictional account, What We Fought For, emphasizes the unique motives of the Northern states involved in the Civil War; through usage of war letters from the Union soldiers. The historian shared his historical account to inform his audience about war interpretations. Whitman, Twain, and McPherson interpret the concept of being an individual through being a part of society, but rebelling against it in order to do what they wish for.

A poet who would agree with Albert Einstein statement of “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think” is Walt Whitman. For in his poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” he has his speaker try to learn through education then experience. Walt Whitman first presents to our readers to a speaker who wants to learn astronomy and attends a lecture. By doing this, Walt Whitman wants to illustrate the disadvantages of education and how it solely relies on numbers and diagrams. Walt Whitman wants to emphasize the value of experience in his poem through his use of imagery, sound, and syntax.

Walt Whitman is one of the greatest American poets to have walked this planet we call Earth. There are several things that make him so special, and one of them is his pedagogy. To really understand Whitman's pedagogy, it is critical to understand and define a pedagogy. This article describes a pedagogy perfectly, “Pedagogy, study of teaching methods, including the aims of education and the ways in which such goals may be achieved”(Peel). Now that pedagogy has been defined; Whitman’s pedagogy is that we are all teachers and learn by experience. Whitman’s pedagogy is not as simple as this though, it is actually quite complex. He often uses his pedagogy in his writings. The poems where his pedagogy was most profound were in lines 1228-1236, also known as the destroy the teacher passage, in Song Of Myself, When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer, and passage 6 from Song of Myself.

“Song of myself” is one of Walt Whitman’s excellent poetry of the Leaves of Grass. Referring to the word “myself” from title, it is presumable that the poem is talking about Whitman himself. Moreover, in this poem, he uses several times the word “you”. To some extents, “you” can be referred to his beloved readers. This poem is like a conversation between the speaker and the readers. He tells the readers about his passion to the world and asks us to find him. In addition, to other degrees, “you” also can be regarded as American people. In the poem, he addresses his passion to his nation, to American people. He wants them to read his poem and it will bring them benefits. Overall, this is a poem to praise Whitman himself, to set free his human passion and to address his beloved readers.

As Walt Whitman wrote his multiple editions of Leaves of Grass, each edition always had something new, because he would take his experiences and reflect them into his poetry. For example, the first edition that came out in 1855 wasn’t popular, “Walt Whitman’s literary masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, was first self-published in 1855 with less than glowing reviews.” (Woodworth p. 270). Walt Whitman self-published his first edition due to not being able to find a publisher, the book was beautiful with green leather on the front to give the feeling of “laying down in the grass”. The first edition was mainly focused on nature and the solitude that is found within it. In addition, his involvement in the Civil War appears in the later editions, “When the war broke out, he soon found himself working as a wound dresser for the North. These war experiences became the subject of Drum Taps, a series of poems set during the war.” (Woodworth p. 272). His experiences in the Civil War could be read about in the fourth edition published in 1867. The fourth edition mainly focused on the Civil War and Reconstructionism. Furthermore, his background life before publishing has an influence on his writing, “The life familiar to him is the picturesque, free, unconventional life of the people—not the pale, monotonous, artificial life of literary student, aristocrat, or plutocrat. He enters profoundly into all their difficulties, enjoyments, sorrows, and eager aspirations.” (Noel “A Study of Walt

Almost every college student in the world can relate to being bored in a lecture hall. Old professors teaching boring material that does not relate to what they want to be doing. In Walt Whitman's poem, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," Whitman’s character is describing just that. Whitman used past tense throughout the entire poem. I believe that this poem is someone reflecting on a moment in life where they made a choice between knowledge and true happiness. The character’s ability to connect with nature helps them make a tough decision about what they want in life. Whitman shows this through careful word choice and natural imagery.