Discussion Topic
American Ideals and Societal Values in "Song of Myself"
Summary:
Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" embodies American ideals, particularly democracy and individuality. The poem celebrates the interconnectedness of all life and the diversity of American society, emphasizing equality and unity across races, classes, and creeds. Whitman challenges societal norms by promoting the inherent worth of all individuals and embracing free verse, which defies traditional poetic structures. The poem is a testament to the democratic experiment, celebrating both the individual and the collective, and advocating for self-trust and universal acceptance.
What American ideals and themes are focused on in "Song of Myself"?
Walt Whitman's epic poem "Song of Myself" is his magnum opus on what it means to be an American and to be alive. While he presents his speaker as one who is synonymous with all life and existence, there are also some distinctly American aspects of the work, particularly when Whitman delves into his wonder and respect for the ideals of American Democracy.
Early in the poem, he addresses the ideas of past history and future progress—those who came before and those who will come after—but he doesn't place all his emphasis on them as the "talkers" do. Instead, he calls himself and his reader to action, saying in the third section:
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there...
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is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
This will toward progress is a distinctly American trait, particularly at the time in which Whitman was writing. The country was new and promising, but was moving toward conflict (in the form of the Civil War). One of Whitman's goals with his poem was to unite the varying perspectives in America in an effort to avoid conflict and death. To do this, he tries to empower people to see their importance and worth in the moment they live in as well as the importance and worth of everyone and everything else around them.
In section 8, he addresses the multitude that comprises the country. Unlike some other authors of his time, Whitman does not create walls between people. He does not separate people through racial bias or even moral bias. Unlike many who claim to believe in the ideals of the country, Whitman actually practices them. America is a collection of many races, creeds, genders, orientations, and behaviors, and Whitman aligns himself with all of them through his empathy:
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.
The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen.
The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs,
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sunstruck or in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrain’d by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and I depart.
Rather than pass judgement on any of the above people, situations, or behaviors, he simply "minds them," or pays attention and makes himself aware of them. To Whitman, they are not good, nor are they bad. They simply are, and he will not pass judgement, for judging those who have inherent worth would be to judge himself. As one who truly understands his own self-worth, he also truly understands the inherent worth of others. As he says in section 24:
Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index.
I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.
Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
For Whitman, this land truly was made "for you and me" as Woody Guthrie would later sing.
Finally, in section 51, Whitman specifically addresses the idea of the
various races and perspectives that he has put forth, this time focusing on the
possible contradictions that stem from so many different individuals. Similar
to America, which is a collection of various (often oppositional) perspectives,
Whitman accepts his own idiosyncrasies by writing "Do I contradict myself?/
Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain
multitudes)."
At his best and worst, Walt Whitman was "us." He was American; his land was our
land, made for us all. He was perfect in his imperfections, over 150 years
before John Legend decided to sing about the idea. He was and is the best and
worst that we have been, are, and will be.
Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" focuses upon Democratic ideals, among which are the value of the individual. Thematic of "Song of Myself" is the expression of the self and the love of nature.
In "One's Self I Sing," Whitman extols both the individual and nature:
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
I am enamour’d of growing out-doors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,...
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle,
What is the theme of "Song of Myself"?
Indeed, Walt Whitman's iconic poem, first published in 1855 and republished several more times during the nineteenth century, is about everything. It was Whitman's attempt to help us see the interconnected nature of all things. Whitman scholar Ed Folsom asserts that "Song of Myself" was Whitman's attempt to preserve the Union, which was becoming increasingly divided as a result of slavery. It is a celebration of diversity and democracy, but that celebration begins with praise for oneself:
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
References
Another way to ask this question would be: What isn't "Song of Myself" about?! Walt Whitman's long poem, with its 52 sections of open verse, is about just about everything under the sun.
Take the opening section for example. It begins talking about an "I," the speaker (who in a number of ways resembles the poet himself) and "you" (whom I've always taken to be the reader or listener of the poem). The speaker then quickly moves on to talk about his soul and spears of summer grass, the smells in the air, his breath, the pleasures of the body and of nature and of the city, all sorts of human experiences and occupations, and on an on. In the end, I suppose it's not easy to answer in just a sentence or two what this poem is about.
My best attempt would be to say that "Song of Myself" is about affirmation (finding "good" all over the place) and about the beauty and delight of both the human body and the human soul. To me, it's always meant a lot that Allen Ginsberg singled out one line in Whitman's poem for particular praise: "I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones." He said that the meaning of the line really hit him and stuck with him when he heard his fleshy high school English teacher read the line aloud.
What American societal values does Whitman challenge in "Song of Myself"?
First of all, it revolted against the common conceptions about the equality of black people. In his poem, Whitman describes helping a runaway slave, giving him shelter and rest (see section 10); he even sat next to him at the same table. This flew in the face of accepted social-and some felt moral-conventions, and the notions of equality. He also describes the working black man with positive terms, describing their hard-working nature, their closeness to nature, and their earthiness that kept them real. To make black people the subject of any positive descriptor was risky, and a bold statement about Whitman's belief in equality for all men. This theme of equality even prevails in revolting against class-stereotyping. Whitman praises and exalts the poorer working classes, and for the many "elite" classes, such exultation in grungy, poor, manual labor was quite different and repugnant.
Also, until Whitman, most of the poetry followed set rules regarding rhythm, rhyme, meter, and verse. Whitman revloted against all of that, and wrote free-style, in whatever form he wanted.
A major theme of the poem also was trusting oneself above all other things: religion, morals, conscience, "creeds", and other society-induced sets of rules. This revolted against the intense religious sentiment, and strict moral codes of the time period. But to Whitman, the self was all. He truly followed Emerson's creed that "no law can be sacred to me but that of my nature."
What is "Song of Myself" about, and what are its themes?
"Song of Myself" is Witman's almost (?) mystical testimoney to Democracy, the great democratic experiment. In it he testifies to the essential oneness of everything:
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Whitman goes on to expand the "every atom" he shares with the reader to include "every atom" in American. His all inclusive lists celebrate the widest diversity in America:
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane
whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving
dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are
ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and
looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, (15)
Whitman is giving us the distincitve American literature that Emerson called for, a treatment of democracy not as a concept, but as a living reality where all are equal not in theory, but in day-to-day practice. It is a great celebration of the dream that is America.