Every historical period has its own hero of the time. It can be an active businessman or a sensitive aristocrat that fits the time best. In the poem I Sit and Look Out, Walt Whitman describes the horrors of the oppressive age he was living in. However, he does not try to change the situation and only "sits and look out". The question is whether being a spectator is enough to make the life of the oppressed better. The author is the mirror of the cruel 19th century reality, and this is a huge step towards democratization of the overall situation in the society. Even though such hero of the time does not fight for the rights of the oppressed, he makes the reading audience hear the lamenting choir of voices, who wait to be liberated.
I Sit and Look Out is closely connected with historical data about the situation in the American society in the end of the 19th century. The ideas of Darwinism and Social Darwinism became a scientific and philosophical basis for labor exploitation of black Americans by rising industrialists after the Civil War. It became a convenient explanation of the racist ideas that were popular in the second half of the 19th century.
According to Darwinist ideas, natural selection is the main issue that determines evolution. That means that only the strongest has the right to survive. Darwinism does not consider a human being to be a creation of God and does not take into account the inner desire of the person to grow. Social Darwinism takes the ideas of Darwinism about humans and animals in the wild nature, and applies them to specific social context. According to it, white Americans had a hereditary superiority over former black slaves, that is why they have the right to rule in the United States. In addition,...
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...the end of the 19th century was difficult and thousands of people were struggling under oppressive laws, supported by the racist ideas of Social Darwinism, Whitman (or the protagonist) does nothing. He is like God, who created the humans, but who has not intention to create injustice. That is why he is “sitting, looks out upon, Sees, hears, and is silent” (Whitman 1999). One person could do nothing about liberating the oppressed, but he was able to let the others know about the situation. The narrator of I Sit and Look Out can be called the hero of the 19th century in the United States. His voice is heard after many years and shows the historical example “ex adverso”.
Works Cited
Forsyth, Van. American History: An Anthology, Volume II. American Heritage, Custom Publishing, 1997. Print.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Philadelphia: David McKay, 1999. Print.
In order to comprehend the present state of these two forces, it is necessary to analyze more completely the meanings of Social Darwinism and Social Welfare. Every since Charles Darwin published the Origin of the Species in 1859, social scientists have attempted to explain human behavior as a product of natural selection. In the 19th century, Social Darwinism held that history was about the "survival of the fittest" and "superior" social groups were evolutionary more fit to rule the world. Social Darwinism was at the heart of many pernicious theories of the past century, including scientific racism and eugenics (Goldfield, et al, 1998, p. 721).
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, with its multiple narrators and hickish language, can sometimes prove to be convoluted and rather confusing. The narrators, unfortunately, are no less confusing. Their language aside, each individual personality serves to put a spin on the bias that the information is delivered with, and, in speaking to each other, they further confuse the reader, as their individual motives are, generally speaking, unmentioned. However, there is one character who manages to cut through the fog of individuality and communicate to us what is happening in this novel. Vardaman, who is the youngest narrator, gives us insight into the goings-on of the Bundren family with a much lesser degree of confusion. He also gives us a look into the characters of the other narrators in this novel; his childish attempts at emulation reveal the actions of characters that we may not otherwise see. It is his childish mind that provides us with this viewpoint; he is innocent and unbiased. Although this is never directly said by Faulkner, we can infer it from Vardaman’s dialogue, which is the revealing aspect of all of the characters in this book.
Whitman’s approach to poetry is a reflection of his thought. These thoughts are free and wild, and his typical run-on sentences and his endless litanies of people and places represent the thoughts trying to be conveyed. The overall effect of these run-on sentences provides the reader with a feeling of greatness and of freedom. All of the feelings that are evoked from Whitman’s style can be classified as quintessentially American democratic feelings. The belief that Whitman had no style would imply that Americans as a society have no style, a statement that not only Whitman but Emerson and Thoreau as well fought against through their writings. Whitman and Emerson fighting for the same cause is not coincidental, Whitman has often been viewed as the “child” of Emerson, his work being greatly influenced by Emerson. Whitman’s technique of looking at everything as a whole and always opposed to breaking up the whole can be linked to his belief of unity within our country and the reason why he took the Civil War extremely hard and personal.
Throughout history there have been countless cases where groups of people have fought for their freedom. They have fought their battles in political debates, protests, and in the most extreme cases war. The oppressed continuously try to escape their oppressors, under the assumption that their oppressors live in complete sovereignty. People did not know then and still do not understand today that the environment they inhabit is the key factor that controls communal freedom. In Wallace Stevens “Disillusionment of Ten O’ Clock” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” both speakers affirm that society does not allow individual freedom to exist in this world.
Walt Whitman poem is about the marvel of astronomy. He wanted to learn about the stars. He went and heard an astronomer. He tells, “When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me.” All the data about astronomy was laid out in front of him, but this did not captivate his interest or filled his curiosity. It mad things worst. His plan to see the beauty in the stars was turned to boredom and sitting in a tiresome, lackluster lecture. He writes, “How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick.” The lecture, data, and astronomer were not the beauty he wanted to see. The visual experience is what he wanted to see. The silence and view of the stars was better for him than the lecture and data. The beauty is what he really wanted. He did not want the hard facts.
During his time in jail, the passage captures the spontaneity of his imagination and feelings in contrast to the more logical, philosophical mode of writing practiced elsewhere in the story. The passage serves to inoculate Thoreau against the accusation of self-righteousness or moral grandstanding, which he refutes in subsequent paragraphs. It attests to the fact that he has already put his words into action. The first-person narration allows Thoreau to frame a complex and abstract political issue in a voice that personally bears witness to the human effects and consequences of government oppression. It exposes the reader to Thoreau's own ambivalence and to the ongoing process of self-examination that he encourages his fellow men to undertake in their own conscience. While confident in his conviction that slavery is morally wrong, Thoreau generally avoids dogmatic, authoritative statements I favor of a more tentative, moderate firs-person voice. Thoreau personifies the State "as a lone woman with her silver spoons." He casts government not as a mechanical agent of injustice but as a feminized object of pity. His confrontation with the State proves to him that physical violence is less powerful that individual conscience. He realizes that, far from being a formidable brute force, government is in fact weak and morally
“Song of Myself” is an attempt by Walt Whitman to become the “American poet” as described by Ralph Waldo Emerson; he attempts to be “[T]he sayer, the namer, and [representative] of beauty” (Emerson 1182). Whitman wants to speak to and for America. Whitman does not explicitly choose sides on the slavery debate that was raging at the time of his writing, but he does express the equality of all people, regardless of gender and race in “Song of Myself”. While Whitman’s writing can be read as neutral but “Song of Myself” is, in reality, very anti-slavery and pro-equality.
A situation can be interpreted into several different meanings when observed through the world of poetry. A poet can make a person think of several different meanings to a poem when he or she is reading it. Langston Hughes wrote a poem titled "I, Too." In this poem he reveals the Negro heritage and the pride that he has in his heritage and in who he is. Also, Hughes uses very simple terms that allow juvenile interpretations and reading.
Social Darwinism is a late 19th century term used to describe the application of British naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to social and political conditions. Late 19th century sociologist Herbert Spencer tried to capture the essence of social Darwinism with his phrase “survival of the fittest”. This essentially meant that the strong would rise to the top while the weak simply died out. Social Darwinists eschew social responsibility and compassion, instead believing that some people are more fit to survive than others. Many social Darwinists advocated that the government should maintain a laissez-faire, or hands off, approach when it came to regulating economic competition and alleviating social inequalities. Social Darwinism was used to justify the consolidation of the majority of wealth by a minority of Americans. The term allowed people to rationalize capitalism, imperialism, racism, and even eugenics. The wealthy believed in social Darwinism because it allowed them to justify their oppressive business tactics and low wages for their labor force. Politicians believed in it because it allowed them to justify imperialism, or expansion of the nation. Affluent Anglo-Saxons believed in social Darwinism, believing themselves to be the superior race, and used it to justify ...
The concept of Social Darwinism was a widely accepted theory in the nineteenth-century. Various intellectual, and political figures from each side of the political spectrum grasped the theory and interpreted it in various ways. In this paper, we will discuss three different nineteenth-century thinkers and their conception of Social Darwinism. The conservative, Heinrich von Treitschke, and liberal Herbert Spencer both gave arguments on the usefulness of competition between people on a global scale. The anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, refuted the belief of constant competition among members of the same species and emphasized mutual aid.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence. "An Important American Critic Views Whitman." Critical Essays on Walt Whitman. Ed. James Woodress. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983. 116-127.
There is contrast in Whitman's view, which embraces all society, and that which surrounds him. He views all mankind and nature as intertwined in the past, present and future in one perpetual cycle of life and death. He speaks of the sameness of man and se...
Walt Whitman is arguably America’s most influential poet in history. Born Walter Whitman in May 31st, 1819 to Walter Whitman and Louisa van Velsor, he was immediately nicknamed ‘Walt’ to distinguish him from his father. He came to life in West Hills on the famous Long Island, the second of nine children that grew up in Brooklyn. He came to be fondly known as ‘the Bard of Democracy’, mainly because that was a main message in his work. He is also celebrated as ‘the father of the free verse’. He was a liberal thinker and was vehemently against slavery, although later on he was against the abolitionists because, according to him, they were anti-democracy. He managed to marry transcendentalism with realism in his works. His occupation was a printer school teacher and editor.
Although Whitman uses a great deal of structural ways to stress his ideas, he also uses many other ways of delivering his ideas. First of all, Whitman portrays himself as a public spokesman of the masses. The tone of the poem is a very loud, informative tone that grabs ones attention. The emphasis placed on the word “all” adds to the characterization of Whitman as a powerful speaker. Furthermore, Whitman takes part in his own poem. Participating in his own poem, Whitman moreover illustrates the connection between everything in life. Lastly, Whitman, most of all, celebrates universal brotherhood and democracy.
Walt Whitman wrote many great poems, yet while I read through a list of poems to analyze, one of his most popular poems caught my eye. “O Captain! My Captain!” has so many hidden meanings, as well as sentence structure and imagery. This twenty-four line piece of literary art has made its mark on history by describing the feeling of losing a friend, as well as a leader. This work is a great poem to expose readers to exploring the depths of the words written to interpret the hidden messages among them.