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Figurative Language
Sections 1-8 contain an abundance of repetition, alliteration, rhetorical questions and parallelism mixed in with metaphors, similes, tricolon, tetracolon, and rhyming.
Song of Myself is written by Walt Whitman, a renowned
Romantic poet of the 19th century.
Shaping of the mind:
This category consists of inquiries
and statements that question fact or alleged fact
as known by the masses.
this category correlates with the "sixth sense" aspect
of transcendentalism, as it helps one to realize the truth
about one's self by questioning common knowledge and
shaping the mind through learning.
image from the Poetry Foundation
Anaphora/anitstrophe
Rhetorical Question
Tricolon/Tetracolon
Repetition
Alliteration
line 35-37
"You shall posses the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of suns left)
You shall no longer take things at second or third nor look the eyes of the dead nor feed on the spectres in books
You shall not look through my eyes either nor take things from me
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself"
lines 140-144
"For me those that have been boys and love women
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children"
"a few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms."
"out of the dimness opposite equals advance always substance and increase, always sex."
"Not words not music or rhyme i want, not custom or lecture, not even the best."
"Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? Have you reckon'd the earth much?"
"What do you think has become of the women and children?"
"Has anyone supposed is lucky to be born?"
"Urge and urge and urge
Always the procreant urge"
"I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end."
"Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same."
"Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff"
"Watching and wondering"
"braced in beams"
"complacent and compassionate"
lines 40-43
"There was never anymore inception than there is now
Nor anymore youth or age than there is now
And will never be anymore perfection than there is now
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now"
Metaphor/Simile
Part 8
Whitman describes his encounters with all sorts of people, and he does not judge them.
Part 7
Whitman speaks of his views on birth and death
Whitman acts as a companion for all people
"Handkerchief of the lord"
"flag of my disposition"
"the grass itself is a child, the produced babe of the vegetation"
Whitman states his purpose of the poem
He expresses the boundaries of his persona and how he relates to the reader
Children are a major part of Romantic learning not only specific
to transcendentalism, but the idea the imagination of the child's
mind basically is that man is the product of his habits and behavior developed in childhood.
This translates to Whitman's poetry as he mentions youth and children as a driving force to living life as youth is a powerful thing.
This along with the questioning of common
knowledge translated to the anti-societal
aspect of Whitman and other transcendentalist
writings
A major and possibly the biggest part of Romanticism and Transcendentalism is the thought of nature as a pathway to the spirit.
Walt Whitman uses these introductory sections to convey the ideas and themes he wishes to express throughout the rest of the poem.
As opposed to contemporaries like Emily Dickinson, Whitman falls under the Transcendentalist category of Romantic poets, as opposed to being a dark romantic such as other famous poets circa his time, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Dickinson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Transcendentalism is a denomination of Romantic poetry that highlights nature as a pathway to the spirit, knowledge as a sixth sense to realize the truth about one's self, children as a guiding power to heighten the imagination. Anti- materialism/anti- governmentalism were commonly looked down upon in Whitman's poetry as other poets like him because the masses and "conformist mentality" were the enemy of the transcendentalist thinkers.
In Short, Whitman's writing, in this case Song
of Myself, connects to the Romantic style
of writing, and specifically transcendentalism
through:
1. Shaping of the mind
2. Allusions to reverence and respect to the minds of children
3. Use of naturalism as a pathway to the spirit
4. An anti-general societal attitude