Walt Whitman's "Self"

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in Long Island, New York (Biography). His mother was barely literate. Whitman’s father never read any of his poetry. He was a carpenter, and he built a lot of houses. He was too busy trying to provide for all of his children. Whitman was one of nine children, and four of his brothers and sisters were handicapped. When Whitman was young he was pulled out of school, and he became an apprentice of a printer. He then began to love writing. Whitman mainly taught himself, and he soon became familiar with a lot of well known authors and books (Biography).
Most of Whitman’s poems are about finding one’s “self”. A lot of his poems are about the character being lost and not being able to know who they really are, or they could be about how someone feels after loosing someone they love. In Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” Whitman writes about how he feels when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated (Whitman, “O Captain!”). Whitman describes a mighty vessel, a ship, in his poem which represents the entire American nation. The captain, Lincoln, was killed in the poem which represents his assassination. In the poem, the captain does die, but his ship makes it safely to shore. This represents all the good that Lincoln did, like guiding the nation through the Civil War and abolishing slavery. The ship still makes it to shore because after Lincoln was assassinated, the United States became one Union again, and slavery was abolished (Whitman, “O Captain!”)
In this poem Whitman is finding his “self” because he is describing how he feels when someone he loves has died, but he describes how good of a man he was and how much people loved him. “For you bouquets of ribbon’d wreaths – for you the shores a-crowding; For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning…” (Whitman, “O Captain!”) This poem could also be related to Whitman's spiritual "self" because Lincoln could be seen as Jesus who sacrifices himself for his people.
In Whitman’s “Myself and Mine” Whitman describes himself. Whitman gives many examples of things he finds important in life (Whitman, “Myself”). Whitman says, “I give nothing as duties; What others give as duties, I give as living impulses; (Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?) Let others dispose of questions – I dispose of nothing – I arouse unanswerable questions; Who are they I see and touch, and what about them? What about theses likes of myself, that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections?” (Whitman, “Myself”). Whitman describes how he is and what he feels in this small excerpt from the poem. He is finding and describing his “self” in it because he is talking about what he personally believes in.
Song factors into “self” because songs are a lot like poems, and they describe how someone is feeling. Most songs tell a story about someone’s life or what is going on in their life right then. A lot of songs are also about finding out who that person wants to be, or what they should do in a given situation. That is how song relates to “self”.
Whitman is yet another poet/writer from a small background. He has grown, like many other writers, into a famous and terrific author. Whitman writes a lot about finding one’s “self” which is what “O Captain! My Captain!” and “Myself and Mine” are about. Finding one’s “self” can be literally finding out who a person is, or it could be finding out what a person should do in a given situation, like when a loved one is lost. Whitman does a great job in describing what finding one’s “self” is like in many of his poems. He is a terrific writer, and his works are always a pleasurable read.


Works Cited:
“Biography of Walt Whitman”. American Poems…Your Poetry Site. Gunnar Bengtsson:
2000-2011. Accessed 23 Feb 2011. http://www.americanpoems.com
/poets/waltwhitman.
Whitman, Walt. “Myself and Mine”. Leaves of Grass. 1900. Print.
Whitman, Walt. “O Captain! My Captain!”. Leaves of Grass. 1900. Print.