References to Homosexuality in Walt Whitman's Song of Myself

References to Homosexuality in Walt Whitman's Song of Myself

"WHITMAN WAS MORE MAN THAN YOU'LL EVER BE," said a student of Louisiana State University. When asked questions of your sexual preference or thoughts on the issue of sex, I would venture to say it makes most people uncomfortable. This is an age-old topic that people know about, yet do not want to talk about. He was particularly reticent about his issues regarding sex and his particular sexual preference. In fact, of Whitman's struggles the most difficult for him to deal with was his ever so strong homosexual desires (Hubbell 283). Whether homosexuality is right or wrong is not for me to decide. Though I feel it should not be used so explicitly in works of literature.

Homosexuality, by definition, is the act of having relations with members of the same sex (Webster's Dictionary). In today's society, we chose to either disregard homosexuality, to accept it, or to engage in it. Someone you least expect is probably a homosexual to some extent. Most heterosexuals tend to pretend that homosexuality does not exist or judge those who chose to engage in it. This issue is not new. In fact, in the early nineteenth century many letters and diaries that have been examined show that middle class men and women of all ages participate in relations that verged on sexual- homosexual love. Today these acts would be judged as homoerotic, yet were viewed with tolerance and were even encouraged by leading middle class moralists. Readers of the time took little notice to poets like Whitman, not even to condemn them for immorality, a charge which they typically reserved for poems with heterosexual themes (Killingsworth 98).

Whitman was a unique poet and a...

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...e had no idea when writing this work what the future would hold, we are now reading this in our literature class. Is this really appropriate? We are college students, and as mature adults, this material should be something we can handle. What do you think? I believe that homosexuality is very real, and that we need to learn about it and educate ourselves about the issue. Yet, I don't think we should go as far as being explicit about it in our textbooks.

Works Cited

Hubbell, Jay B. Eight American Authors- A review of Research and Criticism. The

Modern American Language Association of America. New York, 1956.

Killingsworth, Jimmie. Whitman's Poetry of the Bdy. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London. 1989.

Lauter, Paul. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Third Edition.

Houghton Mifflin Company, New York. 1998.