Whitman as a Poet of Democracy/Poet of America

‘Song of Myself’ represents Walt Whitman as a poet of America with strong democratic impulses. He considers all the Americans equal irrespective of their caste, sex, color, religion and status. Although the poem celebrates the ‘self’, that self has a great deal in common with the American people. He was proud of being an American and believed modern America to be the center of science and democracy.

Walt Whitman was keenly aware of the glaring defects of democracy as it was functioning in America in his time. But at the same time he took an exalted view of his countrymen and visualized a great democratic future for them. He foresaw a great and noble destiny for America. He marked the sources of evil in tyranny or superstition rather than in human nature, and out of the comparatively free environment of America, he expected the emergence and growth of a proud, noble and ambitious race.

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Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’ contains memorable panoramic pictures of American people and American scenes. There are several sections in the poem in which catalogs of American people and scenes occur. Section 8, for example, contains pictures of the heavy omnibus, the clank of the shod horses, the excited crowd and the policeman working his passage to the centre of the crowd, the fury of the roused mobs, etc. Besides, there are the clam-diggers, the marriage of the trapper with a ‘Red girl’ having long eye-lashes, and the ‘runaway slave’.

Section 15 contains an extraordinary long list of people of various occupations-the carpenter, the pilot, the duck shooter, the deacons, the spinning girl, the mechanist, etc. In Section 16, the poet presents himself as a comrade of Californians, of free north-westerners, of craftsmen, of coalmen, and he identifies himself with persons of every trade and rank.

In ‘Song of Myself’ Whitman speaks as a prophet because much of what he visualizes has been achieved by the Americans. They have shown themselves worthy of the programmes of action and onward march. The proud American whom Whitman celebrates in his poem has to be strong. The modern American woman has to be an athlete, not a timid, submissive delicate creature. He considers woman to be man’s equal, but woman has to be a potential producer of heroes and bards.

In conclusion, we can say that the omnivorous lines of ‘Song of Myself’ convey Whitman’s sense of the teeming American life. The movement of his verse echoes the sweeping movement of the great currents of the living people of America.