Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman 's Male and Female Voices in Song of Myself

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Introduction - Walt Whitman is one of the celebrated and heavily criticized poets because of his own style of writing poetry during his time . He produced many works that critics and analysts and students of literature still reference today when they debate about issues on literary writing , and one of the popular works of Whitman that takes center stage during these discussion include the poem `Song of Myself found in the compilation book Leaves of

Grass ' In the poem Song of Myself ' dubbed as America 's first in terms of Yankee originality (Loving xv ' and which was included in the book Leaves of Grass which is a collection of his works , Whitman was able to once again display one of the characteristics of his writing style - which is the presence of the both male and female voices of the speaker of the poem . Throughout the poem , Whitman shows how both a man and a woman speak in the poem by alternately changing the tone of the poem to indicate a woman or a man 's voice speaking during particular lines and verses . There are several examples taken from the poem itself to prove the point that Whitman was indeed alternating the gender of the speaker , to illustrate the aim of the author to have both genders represented in the poem equally

Whitman 's use of imagery involving rooms filled with the scent of perfumes puts the reader in a state of mind imagining that the one speaking is a woman ( Houses and rooms are full of perfumes , the shelves are crowded with perfumes , I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it ) and then transitioning back to speaking like a man was talking to the reader . Whitman symbolized the presence of man and woman through the use of two opposite or two equally significant and related items (seen immediately starting at stanza two with the mentioning of silk thread and vine , breathing /lungs and beating of the heart , green leaves and dry leaves , etc . Another important proof of the absence of absolute identified gender of the speaker that leads to the belief that Whitman was speaking both as man and woman can be found in the sixth line of the fourth verse , The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love (Loving 145 ' Also , during moments when Whitman was trying to be more vague , the author hints of the voices of both male and female speaker , i .e , in verse seven lines seven to eight Whitman wrote , I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth , I am the mate and companion of people , all just as immortal and fathomless as myself (Loving 148 ' This line was followed by another affirmation in the absence of gender orientation in the poem when Whitman wrote Every kind for itself and its own , for me mine male and female (Loving 148 Lastly...