Compare and contrast witman/dickenson - Essay Example

Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” is a 42-line poem that stresses out the idea that death is nothing but a transition toward a better, fuller and richer existence and that “all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses” (Whitman, line 41). The poem, with its first-person narrator, is more like a series of innocent, childlike speculations of a grown up man on what the grass is. The poem begins with a child asking “What is the grass?” (1). After the man humbly admits at the beginning of the poem that he does not know any better than a child, proceeds to describe the grass the grows on graves and ascribes a number of positive qualities to it – the same positive qualities that the poet himself wants the reader to know about death.

In “Song of Myself,” Whitman employs various instances of figurative language that convey the theme of death. As Whitman implicitly and humbly declares his innocence when he says “…I do not know what [the grass] is any more/ than [a child]” (2-3), he goes on to reveal his various speculations on what the grass really is and what its significance is. The poet uses metaphor all throughout the poem to explain what the grass could actually mean now that neither a child nor any adult like him actually has any idea of it.

In fact, the metaphor is the most dominant form of figurative language used by Whitman in the poem and an evidence of which is found in the line “I guess [the grass] must be the flag of my disposition” (4). The line may imply that the grass is simply a symbol of one’s disposition or temperament, thus the grass on a dead man’s grave somehow reveals much about what the person is like when he was still alive. Perhaps if the grass on one’s grave is neatly trimmed, then it shows that relatives and friends to whom the deceased may have shown kindness are somehow taking good care of the grave.

Moreover, the mention of the word “flag” in line 4 somehow ascribes a national significance to the grass, although the meaning of which is not particularly clear. Another instance of a metaphor is found in the line “…I guess [the grass] is the handkerchief of the Lord/ A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt” (6-7). This particular metaphorical reference to the spiritual somehow means that the grass, which is symbolic of death, is rather like a proof of the existence of the good Lord who never takes anything away without leaving something good.

Perhaps the message of the line is that death is the only way with which a person may leave the world a remembrance of the good that he has done. A third instance of metaphor is evident in the line “…I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the/ vegetation” (10-11). The metaphor here reveals only one thing – death is a sign of rebirth. It therefore also follows from this statement that unless one dies then there is no way that he can become a child again, and that death perhaps is the only way to go back to innocence.

Lastly, the metaphor is used in the line “…I guess [the grass] is a uniform hieroglyphic” (12). With the grass taken as a symbol of death, this particular line somehow reveals the idea that death is all about uniformity – or that everyone dies regardless of who he is when he is alive, and that death is the grass “