Walt Whitman Literary Devices

To concoct a visual with just reading an accurate and detailed portrayal of actual life, which includes real characters in real lives with real jobs and real problems was very significant to this country’s literary history. “Realism in American literature, which lasted from 1865-1910, was a reaction to and a rejection of Romanticism” (http://education-portal.com). “Walt Whitman was determined to express the truth through verse using authentic American situations and settings with language that appealed to the senses, [for instance the battlefield hospital in Falmount, Virginia.] The Civil War provided him with an adept opportunity” (http://edsitement.neh.gov). In comparison to Abraham Lincoln, whom also transcended his speech in a way readers could create hatch an optic. Lincoln did use some powerful rhetorical speaking devices in his writing, which included parallelism and repetition.

The purpose of Lincoln’s speech was to dedicate a plot of land that would become Soldier’s National Cemetery to honor the fallen. However, the Civil War still raged and Lincoln realized that he also had to inspire the people to continue the fight. During his speech, Lincoln begins invoking the principles of human equality contained in the Declaration of Independence and connected the sacrifices of the Civil War with the desire for “a new birth of freedom,” as well as the all-important preservation of the Union created in 1776 and its ideal of self-government