To speak honestly and openly, America takes a lot of sucker punches in our modern day world. Whether it's attacks on our supposed fatness or material greed, or our inferiority in comparison to the cultured and seasoned life styles of classic European societies, being American does not always have the most positive connotation nowadays.
That's why I found reading Walt Whitman's work to be particularly refreshing; Whitman strikes me as one of the most truly and obviously "American" of the authors we have read in this course so far, and Whitman certainly has this reputation in the world of 19th Century literature. Particular features and aspects of his writing effect the "American-ness", most prominently the sense of camaraderie, acceptance, and diversity of experience and hard work that Whitman writes about in his pieces.
"Song of Myself" is one such piece that stands out as very American. The community and shared experience that Whitman speaks of in the piece aligns well with the American mentality of equal opportunity and camaraderie; we notice this in the 5th section of the piece in the lines, "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 men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers" (Whitman 1333). The way in which Whitman points out an overlap between his own self and the other "selves" around him demonstrates a unity and common experience Whitman believes exists in his life as an American. This is only one of the countless portrayals of companionship and togetherness we remark in Whitman, another one of my personal favorite images being "The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me, I tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time, You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle" (1336). Nothing says community like a shared meal around the fire!
Whitman's mentioning of the boatmen and the clam-diggers connects to another interesting facet of American-ness in his pieces; Whitman has a fascination for the topic of "work" and "labor", which is of course very American! Part of the American philosophy is the commitment to hard work and individual effort that are supposed to bring us good fortune and wealth over time (capitalism, anyone?). We observe so many people in Whitman's "Song of Myself" that are doing exactly this- working hard to making a living. Section #15 itself is really a collage of images of Americans from all different ages and walks of life carrying out their daily duties, from the "The spinning girl retreat[ing] and advance[ing] to the hum of the big wheel" to "The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws work[ing] at his case" (1339).
Whitman is a pleasure to read, and given our contemporary international status and situation, reminds us Americans that we do have worth and things of which to be proud as a nation.
I love that you mentioned Section 15 because it was one of my favorites. Whitman lists these different images in this long never ending sentence that almost makes them linked into one scene for me. All these different people being described with how they go about their day shows the variety that can be found within America and yet the unity that comes with that diversity. The end of the section drew it all in with "The city sleeps and the country sleeps" because after all those different images, there is that sense of them all doing the same thing in the end.
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