This is another poem that talks about books. However, not any ordinary book, but a biography. This poem in fact, starts with Whitman reading the “biography famous.” The author occasional “ending of the poem with a question is a tricky maneuver that does not always work” I observed that the poet’s ending of “When I Read the Book” with the parenthetical expression seems to have been equally risky. Therefore this poem need some consideration, especially in terms of the amplifications of its value on a particular rhetorical device. Apparently form of “When I Read the Book” as I will see, expresses the ambiguous rhetorical capacity of the parenthetical insertion to serve as either a digression from or an amplification of a main theme. The parenthetical mode of the poet’s search for a main theme in this poem is mention with aligned with the transcendentalist notion as particularly expressed “life” three time.

However, he immediately starts thinking and asks himself if this is really a man’s life. He also asks himself if this is what will happen to him too, after his death. He doesn’t like this idea, because no other man knows something, or at least enough about his life. Whitman himself states that he knows little or nothing of his own life. What he knows is only a few hints, faint clues, but nothing concrete. For example I think that the “indirections” by which Whitman meetings clues to his own life is apply as well to the parenthetical indirection in this poet to me is meaning that the poem exemplifies the artistic practice, where by Whitman manages a work so that readers enter its ambiance. So if I consider the opening line of the poem, apparently designed to encourage to the new generation reader to anticipate a poem identifiable in terms of tradition. This is likely expectation is augmented by the positioning of the word “famous” after the noun it modifies.

In an importance sense, I think that the poet is his own best audience. He like any other reader of the temporary, parenthetical autobiographical reflections in his poem, only indications inside the poet “Real life” as “a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections.” In fact, I apparently I often think that in the fifth line is perceived as implicit parenthetical insertion, similar to the equally intrusive “said I” earlier, then at this stage the poet does not appears to go by himself, but subtract sore-self also gives the impression of withdrawing before his search for it.

Therefore, if not even he knows enough about his life, how can a stranger write about it? In “When I read the Book”, the tone is ironic but also polemic, for Whitman is asking the readers “how and what right does another person have to write a book about my life? There are several sentences that end with life, showing how Whitman cares for it, and considers it a major theme in this poem.