Diction And Tone In Walt Whitman's O Me ! O Life !

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“O Me! O Life!”
Walt Whitman
Diction and Tone
Vainly - unsuccessfully
Plodding - slowly moving
Sordid - shameful In “O Me! O Life!,” Walt Whitman uses a desperate questioning tone to connect the questions that he has of his life to the answer that he comes up with. Whitman uses the questioning tone to set up his true message given off as the answer in the poem: through all the trials of life, one should struggle, for there will be a chance to contribute a verse, to have meaning. Whitman asks about to meaning of life to himself between “endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish” (2). The specific diction such as “endless,” “faithless,” and “foolish” in his poem creates a negative connotation, clearly trying to express

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