Whitman Journal 2

By Jessica Granse

March 12, 2009

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you," (30).

Whitman’s poem seems to have a big struggle between the self and everyone else. He starts off the poem with these lines, which seem to be some type of explanation saying that you are he and he is you, everyone is everyone else. He puts it at the beginning of the poem, it seems to me, because it is something you should know first and foremost before diving into the meaning of the rest of the poem.

There’s a lot of confusion between whether he is talking about himself or the reader or everyone else. Some critics see him as simply egotistical. The way I see it, he is talking about not just himself, not just the reader, and not just everyone else, but how these three fit together. It seems to be a poem of unity. His first section seems to discuss that the audience and himself are all the same, physically and thoughtfully too because he says "And what I assume you shall assume," (30). This is much like saying, as humans they are both endowed with the same common sense. They both tend towards the same assumptions about the world around them because they are the same. Everyone assumes that if they are to walk off the edge of a cliff, they will inevitably fall. In the second section, he seems to be talking about the unity between himself, and thus all humans, with nature. This is why he "will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked," (31). He is saying that we are nature. He takes his clothes off because clothes aren’t nature. Humans are, though. There is a lot of emphasis by critics about the sexual content of the poem, which seems to be introduced within this section. The images of him naked in the woods and him describing the "few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms," (31) as well as some possibly phallic references, seems to be the first examples of the sexual nature of this poem. This seems to further stand for the unity between himself, or humans, and nature. Nature is a very sexual thing. On Cliffnotes, they explained this by saying that, "Sexual union is a figurative anticipation of spiritual union." I couldn’t have said it better myself. He’s using these sexual images to further the union theme that seems to be the basis of this poem. I believe this is also the reason for the sexual images in section 11 where the woman, and Whitman it seems, are watching the 28 young men bathe in the sea. I would also like to mention the child in section 6. The child asks what grass is and he says he is as clueless as the child. This again shows the unity theme by connecting the ages: this young child to the grown man. He does go on to give an explanation of him believing that grass is the child of nature. This shows another prevalent theme in the poem of age or of innocence itself and the cycle of life. The grass represents the beginning of something in nature, but at the same time it is found over the graves of the dead. This also shows a unity between nature and ourselves because no matter what it is present. This young child holds grass in his hand at the beginning of the section, but it also is present at the graves. It is present throughout our lives. There is this unity because everyone witnesses grass. It is everywhere. There are numerous examples throughout the rest of the poem to back up the theme of unity and list could go on forever.