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

“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.

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 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.

Known for being noted as one of America’s most symbolic poet, Walter Whitman, was born in 1819 in New York. Following his limited schooling, Walt became a teacher at various different schools. He did not feel fulfilled while pursuing teaching, so he began to look for something different. Whitman found himself establishing a printing and publishing company. He continued working at his company as he waited for a greater opportunity, which was choosing to be an editor. Walter was not convinced that being an editor was the job for him, he sold his company within a year. The experience of these jobs gave him more of an insight on poetry. He began traveling through the American Frontier enhancing his writing. This nineteenth century poet self-published

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 was a wonderful poet in his lifetime. He with many others influenced the American Literature during the time of the Great Depression. He was an American poet, essayist, novelist, short story writer, journalist, and editor. His work was revolutionary in both its style and content. Whitman promoted himself as the poet of American democracy and of the common man. His exploration and exaltation of sexuality and homosexuality has been downplayed. I plan to talk about Walt Whitman and his life of a poet.

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

In 1819, Walt Whitman was born in a two-story, cedar-shingled house that his father had built about thirty miles east of New York City. Whitman was raised by radical democrats; his father was born on the same day of the Storming of the Bastille in France. His mother was of Dutch ancestry and he claimed that her free spirited perspective of life influenced his personal creative impulses (Lewis). Her belief of combining the “practical and the materialistic” with the “transcendental and cloudy” was likely the source of Whitman’s contradictory instincts (Lewis).

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

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

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.

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.

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