Whitmans lifetime saw both the Civil War and the rise of the United States as a

commercial and political power. He witnessed both the apex and the abolition of
slavery. His poetry is thus centered on ideas of democracy, equality, and brotherhood.
In response to Americas new position in the world, Whitman also tried to develop a
poetry that was uniquely American, that both surpassed and broke the mold of its
predecessors. Leaves of Grass, with its multiple editions and public controversies, set
the pattern for the modern, public artist, and Whitman, with his journalistic endeavors on
the side, made the most of his role as celebrity and artist.

Themes

Democracy As a Way of Life

Whitman envisioned democracy not just as a political system but as a way of

experiencing the world. In the early nineteenth century, people still harbored many
doubts about whether the United States could survive as a country and about whether
democracy could thrive as a political system. To allay those fears and to praise
democracy, Whitman tried to be democratic in both life and poetry. He imagined
democracy as a way of interpersonal interaction and as a way for individuals to
integrate their beliefs into their everyday lives. Song of Myself notes that democracy
must include all individuals equally, or else it will fail.

In his poetry, Whitman widened the possibilities of poetic diction by including slang,
colloquialisms, and regional dialects, rather than employing the stiff, erudite language
so often found in nineteenth-century verse. Similarly, he broadened the possibilities of
subject matter by describing myriad people and places. Like William Wordsworth,
Whitman believed that everyday life and everyday people were fit subjects for poetry.
Although much of Whitmans work does not explicitly discuss politics, most of it implicitly
deals with democracy: it describes communities of people coming together, and it
imagines many voices pouring into a unified whole. For Whitman, democracy was an
idea that could and should permeate the world beyond politics, making itself felt in the
ways we think, speak, work, fight, and even make art.
The Cycle of Growth and Death

Whitmans poetry reflects the vitality and growth of the early United States. During the
nineteenth century, America expanded at a tremendous rate, and its growth and
potential seemed limitless. But sectionalism and the violence of the Civil War threatened
to break apart and destroy the boundless possibilities of the United States. As a way of
dealing with both the population growth and the massive deaths during the Civil War,
Whitman focused on the life cycles of individuals: people are born, they age and
reproduce, and they die.

Describing the life cycle of nature helped Whitman contextualize the severe injuries and
trauma he witnessed during the Civil Warlinking death to life helped give the deaths of
so many soldiers meaning.

The Beauty of the Individual

Throughout his poetry, Whitman praised the individual. He imagined a democratic

nation as a unified whole composed of unique but equal individuals. Song of Myself
opens in a triumphant paean to the individual: I celebrate myself, and sing myself (1 ).
Elsewhere the speaker of that exuberant poem identifies himself as Walt Whitman and
claims that, through him, the voices of many will speak.

Despite this pluralist view, Whitman still singled out specific individuals for praise in his
poetry, particularly Abraham Lincoln. In 1 8 65 , Lincoln was assassinated, and Whitman
began composing several elegies, including O Captain! My Captain!

Motifs

Lists

Whitman filled his poetry with long lists. Often a sentence will be broken into many
clauses, separated by commas, and each clause will describe some scene, person, or
object. These lists create a sense of expansiveness in the poem, as they mirror the
growth of the United States. Also, these lists layer images atop one another to reflect
the diversity of American landscapes and people.

The Human Body

Whitmans poetry revels in its depictions of the human body and the bodys capacity for
physical contact. The speaker of Song of Myself claims that copulation is no more
rank to me than death is (5 2 1 ) to demonstrate the naturalness of taking pleasure in the
bodys physical possibilities. With physical contact comes spiritual communion: two
touching bodies form one individual unit of togetherness. Several poems praise the
bodies of both women and men, describing them at work, at play, and interacting.

Rhythm and Incantation

Many of Whitmans poems rely on rhythm and repetition to create a captivating,

spellbinding quality of incantation. Often, Whitman begins several lines in a row with the
same word or phrase, a literary device called anaphora.

Symbols

Plants

Throughout Whitmans poetry, plant life symbolizes both growth and multiplicity. Rapid,
regular plant growth also stands in for the rapid, regular expansion of the population of
the United States.

Whitman uses flowers, bushes, wheat, trees, and other plant life to signify the
possibilities of regeneration and re-growth after death.

The title Leaves of Grass highlights another of Whitmans themes: the beauty of the
individual. Each leaf or blade of grass possesses its own distinct beauty, and together
the blades form a beautiful unified whole, an idea Whitman explores in the sixth section
of Song of Myself. Multiple leaves of grass thus symbolize democracy, another
instance of a beautiful whole composed of individual parts. In 1 8 60, Whitman published
an edition of Leaves of Grass that included a number of poems celebrating love
between men. He titled this section The Calamus Poems, after the phallic calamus
plant.

The Self

Whitmans interest in the self ties into his praise of the individual. Whitman links the self
to the conception of poetry throughout his work, envisioning the self as the birthplace of
poetry. Most of his poems are spoken from the first person, using the pronoun I. The
speaker of Whitmans most famous poem, Song of Myself, even assumes the name
Walt Whitman, but nevertheless the speaker remains a fictional creation employed by
the poet Whitman.