Walt Whittman Essay Research Paper Palomo1Michael PalomoAmerican

Walt Whittman Essay, Research Paper

Palomo1

Michael Palomo

American Literature

Professor Sanchez

May 9, 2000

Walt Whitman: An American Poet

The ability to pinpoint the birth or beginning of the poet lifestyle is rare. It is rare for the observer as it is for the writer. The Walt Whitman poem Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking is looked at by most as just that. It is a documentation, of sorts, of his own paradigm shift. The realities of the world have therein matured his conceptual frameworks. In line 147 we read “Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake” (Baym 1041). This awakening is at the same time a death. The naivet. of the speaker (I will assume Whitman) is destroyed. Through his summer long observation, the truths of life are born, or at least reinforced, in him. The obvious elements are birth and death, which are both caused by another instance of the latter (death of the “she-bird”). Nature’s role is ever-present. Not only in the sense of it giving a constant livable environment, but also almost deified in the personification of its will and actions. The birth of vision in the speaker is due not only to the observation of death, as that is just a single occurrence, but to the observation of the role of nature in all of its mysterious cycles.

Nature is not the sole source of dramatic symbolism in the piece. The actions of the characters themselves reflect the piece’s definite goals. Though these “characters” set the scene and take center stage at different points, it must be remembered that what occurs is removed from the reader by two filters. The first is the filter of interpretation by the boy who is witnessing the events, it is then filtered through the memory of the boy become both man and poet. The boy has

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thus created a profound story of want and injustice through translation of natural occurrence (sounds and sea), and the man-poet has created a path though which all could trace the progression of these messages into the poet’s insight (”Poems” 8). Due to this fact, the central character in this piece is the boy, foreshadowing what he is to become. Attention is not focused on the birds and sea themselves, but on the boy-man’s growing understanding brought on by them. They are then factors in the equation of nature and speaker.

The seemingly autobiographical nature of this piece instantly calls for observation. The speaker is an older Whitman, advanced and experienced. The poem is a remembrance of his childhood from afar. This gives Whitman the opportunity to distance himself from the time period and make further matured observation. As said before, the experience written from here is a major cause of his personal assent. The structure of time changes throughout the piece, but is consistent. The first stanza of the poem is mostly in the present tense as the advanced Whitman is summarizing the events before he tells of them. On line seven (still the first stanza) Whitman begins to go deeper into summarized explanation with a change to past tense. Here he tells, quite literally, of the two birds’ effect on him as recognized by an older man, but originally seen through a child’s eye. He speaks of the power it held over his senses and how it forces the coming flashback.

“From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and falling I heard,

From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,

From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,

From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease, Palomo3

From the myriad thence-arous’d words,

From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

From such as now they start the scene revisiting,”

His words come by list in force. He speaks of the emotions brought on by the bird’s song and the environmental setting of his piece. He then makes mention of all the words forced upon him upon his epiphany. The word “stronger and more delicious than any” is the word death. This is found in line 168, but eluded to in the introduction. On the shore near the childhood home of Whitman, the scene is set in May when he as a boy, finds a nest of birds, male and female and their eggs. In his observations he translates the actions of the birds through personification. The birds’ thoughts are his own interpretation. He witnesses what he believes to be true love between the two.

“Two together!

Winds blow south, or winds blow north,

Day come white, or night come black,

Home, or rivers and mountains from home,

Singing all time, minding no time,

While we two keep together” (Baym 1039).

There seems to be a perfection to the state which these two share. No matter what the world brings their love exists as it always had. The next stanza begins with “Till of a sudden, May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest, Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next Nor ever appeared again”(Baym 1039). The recently impossible is now the reality. The love perceived by Whitman still exists, but not as a functioning unit. From this point on the he-bird longs for the lost love of his mate. Palomo4 The voice of the he-bird calls for nature to return his love to him by

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