Walt Whitman Essay

Does a person's sexual orientation matter when it comes to art, poetry, or even at all. A beautiful painting is just that, a beautiful painting, whether or not painted by a heterosexual or homosexual. It has been assumed that Walt Whitman was a homosexual based on the tone of his poetry writings. Frances Willard, a pioneer for women and education, also assumed homosexual based on her long term co-habitation relationships with women. Facts can be proven and textbooks should teach facts and leave interpretation and opinions to be discussed in the classroom. Teaching openness, interpretation, and the forming of an opinion is an important lesson for all to learn, but textbooks should only print facts.

Walt Whitman wrote poetry with a tone of homosexuality, therefore assumed homosexual. Whitman was born in 1819 in New York. He worked throughout his life in many different trades gathering experiences along the way, including; a teacher, journalist, clerk, and assisting as a nurse during the civil war. Whitman loved to write poetry and used his own money to publish and untitled book of twelve poems in 1855, later titled, “Leaves of Grass”. Throughout the rest of his life he continued to expand this book adding poems, as well as revising them. The “Leaves of Grass” book spoke of nature, love, friendship, and democracy. Whitman works of poetry, for the time, was called obscene, because of the overt sexual tone of his poems. (Foundation 2014)The topic of Whitman’s sexual orientation has been a topic for discussion by biographers for years. The issue of stating as a fact, that Walt Whitman was a homosexual is that there is just no real proof. Adding in an opinion as fact to Whitman’s poetry can have a terrible effect on his work. Whitman’s...

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...discussion. Discussions should be careful not to narrowly define and reduce the work of Whitman or Willard to one small area of their lives. It is important to print in textbooks and teach facts and not opinions. Once opinions start being printed in the learning textbooks then history starts to change. History needs to be remembered as it happened not as we wanted it to happen or think it should have happened. In remembering history, hopefully, we can learn from our mistakes. It is not pretty to read about some of the things that went on in history; people can be terrible to each other. It should be shocking that the Holocaust happened and the brutality of it all. If it is not shocking, then we are deemed to repeat it. We as people, I hope, can evolve and become better over time. We today, value life more so than they did throughout history or so I hope we do.