Main Features in Walt Whitmans Song of Myself - Research Paper Example

The manner in which Whitman characterizes his hero makes it clear that he is not referring to one single individual. Instead his hero is the collective spirit of the average American citizen that includes himself. The poet’s characterization of himself, which can be identified in the poem, is borne by two qualities: “first, as common circumstances had made him, as an American of his time; second, as magnified by hope, by joy, by exultation, and by the proud, full sail of his great verse.

” The manner in which Whitman transposes the ‘One’ on the ‘Many’ is an effective psychological device. This notion of claiming through the authorial voice, the voice of the whole community of American people is both novel and challenging. The poem lends itself to other dualities: “the One, construed not as a metaphysical principle of unity embothed in the universe at large but as a psychological principle of unity embothed in a particular mind, and thereafter as a mythic principle of unity and power attributable in principle to every mind.

One, in that sense, is then identified with All, and made to extend subjectively to the outer limit of the universe.”Some of the lines in the poem are quite profound, as in, “There was never may more inception than there 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.” These lines are subtly subversive to the Biblical perception.. One, in that sense, is then identified with All, and made to extend subjectively to the outer limit of the universe.

” (Donoghue, 2012, p.248) Some of the lines in the poem are quite profound, as in, “There was never may more inception than there 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.” (lines 31-34) These lines are subtly subversive to the Biblical perception of humanity and human life. To this extent, Song of Myself is a symbol of secular and pragmatic humanism. The secular humanist credentials of the work are further evidenced in the lines “I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,/ And you must not be abased to the other" (74-75).

We see sharp criticism of the dichotomy of good versus evil that is the lynchpin of the Christian religion. Apart from motifs of pragmatism of this sort, the other recurrent motifs are “the air and the grass, and the celebration of the body, the human voice, the natural world, and the city.” (Genoways, 2005, p.1) The celebration of the seemingly mundane and quotidian is a recurrent theme of the poem. Animals, plants and insects find several references. The author employs geographical and ecological markers are part of ‘his’ identity.

For example, in line 694, section 32 we see “They [animals] bring me tokens of myself . they evince them plainly in their possession" (line 694). The theme of interconnectedness and interdependency of all life forms is best illustrated in Whitman’s allusions to animal life. Though his work preceded Charles Darwin’s publication