FREE ESSAY ON SONG OF MYSELF

SONG OF MYSELF

In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman simultaneously
Integrates the concept of himself as an individual,
Completely unique in the universe, with a sense of himself
as a composite of all life, of a kind of divine watcher
who floats over the surface of humanity, observing the
essential oneness of everyone within the context of their
own myriad individualities. He explicates this through many analogies, but one of his
most powerful is through his
comparison of himself to the grass that still covered most
of nineteenth-century America. In this analogy, he manages
to convey not only his identity with the community of life,
but his eventual participation in the company of the dead.