Song Of Myself by Walt Whitman

Giancarlo Baldan

Wow, there is so much to be said after reading this piece by Walt Whitman. I seriously think we could probably spend a whole semester discussing the details that the poem contains, but that’s neither here nor there.

Although it may be odd to begin with a quote, I found or at least thought that this particular quote correlated directly with some of the key points that Whitman is trying to get across. “Our lives are not our own. From whom to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” Now you may not see this just yet but allow me to further elaborate, using words directly quoted from the poem.

Starting with the beginning “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume, you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Here the speaker is talking to Whitman about all that he is, and everything that he represents. Claiming that everything he may be belongs not only to him, but the people in which he surrounds himself with. Therefore his kindness and all the fortunes he acquires passes not only to the people around him, but their children, and their children’s children. On page 65 beginning right under section 3 “I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, but I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any 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.” Here the speaker is discussing with Whitman that the beginning and end is not relevant at all. He states there is too much going on in the everyday now to be focused, or sidetracked with what can be in the beginning or end. There is youth and things going on now that will shape so many beginnings and so many ends, meaning that we are in charge of our beginnings and our ends.

Later Whitman says on page 67 at the end of section 4 “I have no mocking or arguments, I witness and wait.” Then he starts section 5 with “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.”, claiming here that he will not argue or put down himself with the idea of his soul moving forward to the end, or to the beginning of a heaven or hell. Immediately after he says this in the beginning of section 5 he claims how he would rather just be living, lost in the moments that bring him clarity to the purpose or meaning of life. Now at the end of section 6 is where I believe my relation to the quote I stated earlier is clearly demonstrated, the narrator asks Whitman “What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, the smallest sprout shows there is really no death, and if there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, and ceas’d the moment life appear’d all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.” With that enormous quote the speaker sums up the end of section 6, and starts section 7 with another question “Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and know it.” Here I believe Whitman is claiming that reincarnation is real, but using the speaker to ask the question I also think he questions what he believes, leaving the reader with no real answer. He says you’re just as lucky to die as you are when you are born because nothing collapses. The smallest sprout shows no death. He says that we all have it wrong to think of death as this horrible thing, and that in fact it is lucky, a new chance to start over. For death does not rest it’s led forward with another life, it stops the moment life appears.

Coming to conclusion the first line of section 9 reads “The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready.” Here life is defined as this huge thing that awaits us all, and it is up to us to choose all the roads and chances we are going to take. We are going to have to take whatever roles and personalities that come to us, and embrace them, for we can always change. The last quote I took out is the last stanza in section 14 “What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, adoring myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, scattering it freely forever.”  For what is to come is common for everyone, and it’s our jobs as brothers and sisters of humanity to bestow ourselves on each other, and not asking why to this question of life and death, but to scatter what you have to put in, on as much as you can so it live on forever.