Walt Whitman Beliefs

Whitman wrote broad stanzas and focused on the whole of America as his inspiration. His lines covered a wide range of topics and generated multiple points of view for the reader. He called his life’s work “Leaves of Grass”; stressing the

After the Civil War, Walt Whitman realized that the American people were in need of their own identity. Therefore, he wrote the book “Leaves of Grass” with the goal of creating a literature piece that was authentic and organic to the United States in every sense. Whitman introduced to literature the idea of the “American Dream” and highlighted how important it was for the American people to develop their own identity. Consequently, he rejected the European writing styles and adapted the use of free-verses to his writing, making it a popular writing style in American poetry. Whitman valued of humanity, nature and spirituality. Therefore, he joined the Transcendental literary movement and

He was born in May 1819 in New York. Whitman “aimed to transcend traditional epics, eschew normal aesthetic form, and reflect the nature of the American experience and its democracy” ("Walt Whitman"). Whitman’s views on slavery are a little confusing. He initially called for the abolition of slavery but later viewed the Abolitionist Movement as a risk to democracy. In his poem Leaves of Grass he portrays African Americans as “beautiful, dignified, and intelligent” (Klammer). However in other poems, Whitman writes how he thought blacks were inferior and that he had little sympathy for them (Klammer). Whitman volunteered his time caring for wounded soldiers ("Walt Whitman"). He made 600 hospital visits and saw more than 100,000 patients ("Walt Whitman"). This encouraged him to return to poetry where he wrote about the realities of the Civil War. In the final years of Whitman’s life, he wrote that he was disappointed in the America that he saw emerge after the Civil War ("Walt

Walt Whitman was born in 1819, a second son to a housebuilder and one of 9 children. He worked as a printer at an early age, this is where he became enamored with the written word. Working as a printer in New York until a fire devastated the printing section of the city he was self-taught reading the works of Homer, Dante and the Bible. Whitman worked as a teacher for several years before becoming a journalist, full-time and establishing the paper The Long Islander. He worked as an editor for several papers before moving to New Orleans to become the editor of The Crescent where he first experienced the reality of the slave trade. Returning to his hometown of Brooklyn in Long Island he founded the newspaper the Brooklyn Freeman and continued

Walt Whitman’s works and pieces illuminates on the potential of America. Whitman is a very outspoken and an optimistic poet and feels that when he was visiting New Orleans this truly exposed him to the harshness of slavery. Based on his beliefs and knowledge, he believes that America will very likely make a superior change to our society. Whitman states, “Center of equal daughters, equal sons”(Whitman 1,“America”). Through his poetry, Whitman portrays the need for equality and he helps Americans discover the nation without slavery and oppression. Racism is surely a societal issue; everyone should be “Singing with open mouths their strong

Walt Whitman was a very strong minded, and anxious American author, who accomplished goals and made a great impact on the world today.

Walt Whitman was a man full of adventures yet filled with many questions about Historical events and Religious matters. His curiosity pushed him to pursue his questions and made him ponder on them, influencing him to write many poems that spoke about the blinded truth. His poems increased his fame as critics talked about him despising the fact that many Americans loved him. The Civil war was propounding for him due to his pride for his country and the lives fighting for it. Walt Whitman’s experience in the Civil war with the wounded soldiers and his alcoholic father inspired him to write about the tragedies of the war and about mental instability.

Walt Whitman is the first generation of Americans who were born in the newly formed United States and grew up in the stable existence of the new country. Pride was apparent throughout the newly formed nation, and it definitely showed within his family. “Walt Sr.-after giving his first son Jesse(1818-1870) his own father's name, his second son his own name, his daughter Mary(1823-1899) the name of Walt's maternal great grandmothers, and his daughter Hannah(1823-1908) the names of his own mother-turned to the heroes of the Revolution and the War of 1812 for the names of his other three sons: Andre Jackson Whitman(1827-1863), George Washington Whitman(1829-1901), and Thomas Jefferson Whitman(1833-1890).”(Price) The only child who was not tied to the family crest nor the country's history was the youngest son, Edward. Unfortunately Edward was physically and mentally handicapped. Walt's traditional educational journey proved to not be as impactful as some might have thought. “In Whitman's school, all the students were in the same room, except African Americans, who had to attend a separate class on the top floor. Whitman had little to say about his rudimentary formal schooling, except that he hated corporal punishment, a common practice in schools and one that he would

He gave the lower class a voice through his means of poetry and believes. He also believed that slavery would “gradually disappear in the course of anticipated social, economic, and moral developments." He agreed with Lincoln to send the slaves that were free back to Africa. Whitman main theme of writing was "loneliness, unrequited affection, and the grave". His main poem "leaves of grass and songs of myself," express the importance of one self.

“Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul” (Whitman). The brilliant mind behind this quote is Walt Whitman, one of the greatest and most influential poets America has ever produced. Walt was inspired by transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Although, Walt Whitman is considered the most radical out of the three. He had many radical views, but primarily on his views of the individual, religion, and education. Walt Whitman believed in a certain pedagogy, otherwise known as the method and practice of teaching, and he also had certain views of what it means to be a teacher and about learning past the years of school.

He brings forth the idea that we need to get to a point where we no longer need the teacher so that we are able to teach ourselves what others are not capable of teaching us. Is the need of a teacher true, or is it just another challenge that society has set up for us to overcome? In a passage that many like to call, “Destroy the Teacher”, Whitman quotes, “He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.” Perhaps, in some ways, it is better to destroy the teacher and to begin learning by ourselves and experiencing everything for ourselves, after all, experiences are better than just sitting a classroom and attempting to soak the information up like a sponge. When being self-taught, there is more information present to the person, while being in a classroom would provide learning with some restrictions, well, maybe a lot of restrictions. Whitman himself was a teacher, his influence has spread to many individuals and Janice Trecker in her paper reports, “The messianic Walt Whitman of the poem had a message that he clearly believed was vital, and, in fact, the form he chose proves highly effective as a teaching device.” Whether Whitman would’ve seen himself as a teacher or not is entirely a mystery because we are unable to ask him how he thought of himself, but even if he would’ve liked it, he was a good teacher to future writers.

Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman had very similar lives. They both came from working class families and neither one of them went to high school or graduated college. They learned from watching people and by reading books on their own. They both had a certain sense for the world that made them able to see what was going on around them and grasp its significance. Although Whitman was born sixty years before Sandburg there were still a lot of the same things happening in America and they both picked up on one important factor of the time, that of the average working class man. Whitman and Sandburg admired the working class man for all of his hard work and they wrote a lot about this

In the article, “Lincoln and Whitman,” by David S. Reynolds, Abraham Lincoln had a huge impact on the poetry of Walt Whitman. First off, Lincoln believed Whitman’s poems about him were astonishing and therefore read them to his colleagues. In addition, Whitman’s writing in his poems had changed after the Civil War occurred and his poetic output decreased. For example, before the Civil War, Whitman wrote comprehensive poems. Whitman’s poetry volume, “Leaves of Grass,” thoroughly explained how the relationship between Lincoln and him was nothing short of legendary. Abraham Lincoln was impressed with Whitman’s poem volume and decided to read it aloud to his colleagues. However, Whitman’s content in his poems had changed after the Civil War. Whitman

Why? That my question. Why do we do things so evolved around everyone’s opinion? We only see what people want us to see. But this guy finally saw something different. Something that we all are to blind to see. Walt Whitman, this man has written so many poems on life. He always relates to them in some weird shape or form. I’m going to tell you how he relates to three of his poems.

Authors during the antebellum period took a personal interest in finding possible solutions to various social issues occurring in their lifetimes. One of the biggest issues writers sought to resolve was racial and slavery tensions between different social groups. Abolitionists and scholars used literature to address African Americans’ concerns and work within the public eye to better others lives. While authors like Ralph Emerson and Henry David Thoreau choose to describe a specific social issue and its’ association with nature, others as Walt Whitman explore explaining interconnectivity to answer the problem of racial relationships. In The Leaves of Grass, Whitman depicts how people have more in common with each other than they realize and