A Critical Analysis Of Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself

“Song of Myself,” Whitman’s great lyric poem, exemplifies his democratic ideals without diminishing the intense feeling of a real world. Walt Whitman had some radical ideas about America, democracy, spirituality, sexuality, nature and identity. He used “Song of Myself” to explore those ideas while preaching self-knowledge, liberty and acceptance for all. Above all, “Song of Myself” is a poem of incessant motion. Whitman is opposed to self-righteous judgments and feelings of guilt and shame about the body. In the article “Walt Whitman’s different lights” by Robert Martin, he illustrates how Whitman’s ideas such as democracy, unity and life in general, including sexuality and death have not been properly appreciated by American society.

According

To dispel those fears and to praise democracy, Whitman tried to be democratic in both life and in poetry. On the other hand, an important point illustrated in Martin’s article is that the war tested Whitman’s faith of the American democratic vision, but he stated that liberty couldn’t be obtained from legal documents, but only with “mainly affection” that can tie states with the “love of lovers” (Martin 49). Meaning that democracy goes beyond politics, and in order to have democracy American people have to learn to love their enemies. Whitman also imagined democracy as a form of interpersonal interaction and as a way for individuals to be able to integrate their beliefs in their daily lives. "Song of myself" points out that democracy must include all persons equally. Martin emphasizes that a large part of Whitman’s work does not essentially mentioned to discuss politics, most of it deals with democracy: it describes communities of people coming together. For Whitman, democracy was an idea that

Whitman’s poetry reflects the vitality and growth of the early United States. During the nineteenth century, America expanded at a tremendous rate, and its growth and potential seemed limitless. But the violence of the Civil War threatened to break apart and destroy the boundless possibilities of the United States. As a way of dealing with both the population growth and the massive deaths during the Civil War, Whitman focused on the life cycles of individuals: people are born, they age and reproduce, and they die. Robert Martin mentions that Whitman sees death as a natural part of life. Whitman doesn’t believe in physical death, and he assumes that when one person dies, he or she will rise again in another transformed one, “They are alive and well somewhere, the smallest sprout shows there is really no death” (40). In this line he also affirms his contribution to the world, where he argues that even after he dies, his body will contribute to the establishment of a new life on the earth. He also tries to encourage people to don’t expend their life regretting things. Describing the life cycle of nature helped Whitman contextualize the bad experiences he witnessed during the Civil War, linking death to life helped give the deaths of so many soldiers’ meanings (Martin