Walt Whitman Identity

One of Whitman's greatest poems, "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" is also largely shaped by the subject’s reminiscences of his boyhood, and of how his desire to become a poet arose during that crucial period of his development. In Walt Whitman’s America, David S. Reynolds describes Whitman’s visits to his grandparents on Long Island as one of the poet’s favorite boyhood activities. During these visits, Whitman developed his life-long love of the Long Island shore, “sensing the mystery of that territory where water meets land, fluid melds with solid” (Folsom and Price “A Brooklyn Childhood and Long Island Interludes”). Whitman’s connection to the Paumanok shore would extend to his verse and build the spiritual passage between the man-poet

At the heart of this poem are the struggles Whitman himself had to face concerning mutually exclusive assumptions about the nature of identity. Whereas one part of Whitman wants to believe that the self is immortal and infinite, he also realizes that the self exists in nature and is thus as mortal and finite as the mate of the bird which must now forever remain a “singer solitary” (“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” line 150). Indeed, all of the subjects in the poem must confront the loneliness inherent in existence; in his discussion on “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” Bauerlein states: “Whitman’s birth as a poet happens when he joins a procession of singers and listeners – mockingbird, boy, man, poet, reader – attending to the cries of lonesome love” (Bauerlein 2). However, the sea, personified as a “fierce old mother” (“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” line 133), rocks her oceanic cradle of death and serves as consolation for the poetic subject as he comes to terms with the realities of life. The sea’s climactic utterance of the certainty of death and loneliness – “death, death, death, death, death” (“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” line 173) – serves as an initiation into maturity for both the boy and the poet. However, one must keep in mind that the function of cradles and mothers is to produce and protect new lives. Thus, while the promise of rebirth is not stated in this poem, it is certainly implied through the movements of natural