Walt Whitman Research Paper

People of all kinds are influenced by their everyday life and it shows in their work. Walt Whitman is no exception to this rule. Whitman was born in 1819

His father was a carpenter, farmer and a freethinking deist and had a reasonable impact on Whitman's thinking. His father was also abusive and most likely an alcoholic. On the other hand, his mother was a Dutch Quaker with whom Walt shared a close relationship. He grew-up during a time when America was growing, making integral decisions that would shape the country's future. His mother helped him through all these times.

Thesis: People who read about Walter Whitman tend to say that he had a good life until his mother pass and his book Leaves of Grass in a book about his life and what he went through.

As I lay dying is considered to some as one of the most notable novels of the twentieth century. Reading the book, when you analyze the structure that Faulkner instilled, this made the story very difficult to comprehend. To support my point, the story is composed of fifteen different points of view from characters in the story. The novel does not have any chapters whatsoever, but rather “sections” and each section looks into one point of view from the fifteen characters. Each section often switches from different events and settings in the story. Aside from the novel’s complications, the storyline was very intriguing due to the chain of events that happened.

Walt Whitman is one of americas greatest poet’s. He was born on long Island at a time before it became a city it was all fields and farms at that time. He left school at age 11; but he kept on educating himself especially he was reading the works of emerson who was a famous author and lecturer. Whitman worked as a newspaper editor in Manhattan but he had the hope and desire to become a Poet. He read emersons essay, “the Poet”, and he started to work on his most famous of all his works which was called “Leave’s of Grass”. It was not a hit at-the-time, the public mostly called it scandalous; because it dealt in part with sexual desire and passion. However, he sent a copy of it to emerson, Emerson was one of the few who praised it. Whitman

life; 1862 was when she wrote most of her poetry. She was writing about one

There have been many influential writers that left their own unique mark on American history; one in particular that has made a significant impact is Walt Whitman. His writing styles evoke different nontraditional methods that did not coincide with the traditions of more “mainstream” American writers. He did this by establishing a pattern that utilized a lot of free verse compared to the more natural rhyme of poems, and also by describing his subject with emphasis to make the story as real as possible. He tried to subject his characters to a variety of situations, and seemed to establish a connection between body and pen. It could be said that Walt Whitman was the most influential writer during the 1900’s and contributed the most to the

Walt Whitman is considered one of the most important writers in the history of American Literature. The people of his own time called him a radical, a madman, and a pornographer. These days he is greatly appreciated and entitled as a fearless prophet of a new stage of human development. Sometimes Whitman would be in a slump and he felt that he needed to deflect the people who inquired too directly. This even meant using examples of homosexual elements in his work, as well as unbelievable stories of him having affairs with numerous women and fathering many children, unknown to him. Throughout these sorts of times W. Whitman has gone through both resentment and flattery, nevertheless showing us

Whitman was able to do this almost effortlessly because he saw what was really going on. He volunteered as a wound-dresser; he wrote letters for wounded soldiers, he gave of himself tirelessly. Whitman saw his nation divided and stood to tell his tale. He was an everyman; he was any man. Whitman was the human embodiment of undying compassion. Most of all Whitman is something

Walt Whitman did not see death as an ending, but rather as the beginning of something new. In Song of Myself, he refuses to anticipate death as something negative. Instead he equated it with nature, writing that “the smallest sprout shows there is really no death” (Whitman 126). Whitman did not treat death as a personified object or a metaphor as many authors often do; he wrote of it almost like a process, a continuation. He believed that death was not an end, but rather part of an infinite cycle of life.

Michael Conlin, professor at the University of Wisconsin, stated, "But Whitman was, in the 1850s, consumed by the coming of the Civil War. It was in the midst of the crisis that Whitman wrote some of the most egalitarian and profound verse relating to African Americans." Being born into a lifestyle where he was taught to take full advantage of white privilege and to show nothing more but hatred towards blacks can explain why he was often between mind and matter when expressing himself. The Civil War caused dismay for many whites because they believed that blacks would make life in the North chaotic. Post Civil War drew in even more worry and tension between black and white men. As humans we all want feel accepted by our peers and sometimes worrying about validation from them drifts us away from our own self beliefs. That may have happened to Walt Whitman as well. Deep down he knew that even a scientific theory could not come to the conclusion that integrity, wisdom, and lack of humane quality was based on race. With that thinking, his works provided and showed how e really felt about African Americans. This dismay could have caused him to be called a "nigger lover" by his peers. His thoughts being diminished based on how his peers felt about him may have been what caused him to take advantage of his white privilege and turn the blind eye towards blacks, the ones he once adored and stuck up for. Later on he discovered that that did not solve any problems because he was also confused on how he actually felt himself. That caused his later works to be bright line in which he was helping both races see the sides of their own madness, he too was expressing how he had connected both with the white and the black man. However, some people

Many critics states Walt Whitman as the best American poet. The publication of Leaves of grass in 1855 marked the beginning of a new poetry. The most innovative thing about Whitman’s poetry was the fact that he completely abandoned all the traditional form of writing poetry and their rules about rhyme meter and length. Instead of using traditional farm of poetry writing he uses free verse to write poetry. This is the style that most modern and contemporary poetry is written in. Whitman abandoned traditional meter patterns in favor of free verse. Free verse is the poetic verse written completely free, without rigid rules or predictable patterns. The tone and content of his poems were also very original. To most of his readers, he sounded alive,

Walt Whitman is considered by many to be one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century. Whitman grew up in New York and was a member of a large family, having eight siblings. Only four of these siblings lived to adulthood. His father was an alcoholic, which led to Whitman becoming more like a father-figure than a brother to his siblings. Whitman quit school at the age of eleven. He then worked as a journalist, as a carpenter, as a teacher, and as an editor before focusing on poetry. Whitman is most well-known for his book of poems, Leaves of Grass. Whitman could not find a publisher interested in his poems; therefore, he published them himself. Whitman rereleased this collection of poems several times, each time with the addition of

Walt Whitman spent eighty-five chapters of his autobiography discussing his war experiences, even though his life through 1860 seemed to be the years crucial to the background for Leaves of Grass, which is often considered Whitman’s most influential work. Whitman made the statement that “My book and the war are one.” This statement seems odd, considering that the majority of Whitman’s published works were written before the Civil War. Whitman’s statement is indicative of his view that the war was a pivotal event both nationally and globally as well as a purification rite necessary for the country. Whitman referred to the Civil War as the “Four Years War,” and he believed the war was a paramount event, not only

Walt Whitman, a civil war nurse was a self-taught poet in the 1800s. Whitman is known for using lists, anaphora, free verse, and other literary devices in his poems. In his works, he focuses on American workers, diversity, transcendent approaches to nature, and individualism. “Song of Myself,” a poem written by Whitman, explores themes of nature, sex, democracy, and spirituality. Whitman uses nature to fuel his creativity in using grass as a symbol of comparison to life by using imagery, metaphors, and analogies.