Walt Whitman

Introduction

In the midst of analyzing and comprehending the changes and the challenges that have been associated, it becomes evident that literature scripts and writing work hand-in-hand. For the purpose of analysis and interpretation, we have taken up the literary works of Walt Whitman. Amongst the most renowned titles that are covered in this paper include 'There Was a Child Went Forth', 'Song of Myself' and 'when I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer'.

Discussion

There Was a Child Went Forth

Perhaps the most beautiful things about this poem are its celebration of a child's growth by accretion and its sense that nothing is lost on the artist even before he discovers his voice. There is a very faint echo of Alfred Tennyson's famed poem "Ulysses" (1842) in the opening stanza. Like the ancient Greek king who, in Tennyson's rendering, fancied himself part of all he had met, Whitman's child became the first object he looked upon. It became a part of him for a day or perhaps for "stretching cycles of years" (line 4). Anyone who has watched an infant study an object in its crib must at some point wonder what is going on in that tiny brain, and Whitman provides one possibility (Callow, p.15).

By the second stanza the child has progressed outdoors and from inanimate objects to living nature, with "lilacs" (line 5) serving as a transitional term because it introduces both biology and color (lilac denotes a pale purple hue as well as a flower), the child's two most important discoveries in the second stanza. It seems especially fitting for a poet who named his life's work Leaves of Grass to plant that grain as the first exclusively outdoor object in the poem (line 6), although the child evidently has yet to learn the name of its color. He can distinguish red and white, however, and by the sixth line comes to understand that such hues are not unique to one object, but that different things (such as morning glories and clover) can share them. He has not only begun to notice sounds but to associate a particular bird song with the species that creates it (Kaplan, Pages 124-145).

With its March lambs, "pink-faint" piglets (note how his struggle to find the precise color combines the two pigments already mentioned), foal (technically a colt is a male foal and a "filly" is a female foal. This is an important distinction because it suggests that the child may not yet be distinguishing between genders), and calf, nature seems as young as he is. He can grasp the similarities and differences between chickens and ducks (the "noisy broods" of the barnyard and the pond mire in line 7), and the magic of water with its curiously suspended fish and graceful plants.

One of the happy consequences of the poet's Quaker background stems from that sect's unwillingness to honor pagan gods (Wednesday derives from Woden's Day and Thursday from Thor) and Roman rulers (July and August honor Julius and Augustus Caesar) in the names of the ...