Egalitarianism in The Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Within Walt Whitman’s works he expresses his egalitarianism or belief in the equality of all people, especially in political, social, or economic life in his epic book called the leaves of grass. His strong point of view in the poem I Sing the Body Electric is expressed through sexuality, body attributes, political views.

In the poem of I sing the body electric Walt Whitman expresses many qualities upon the body. It is as if he almost prizes them upon the glory that each attribute of a human being takes. Within this poem he praises the body based on the meaning of significance in creating relationships between humans. He describes more than different attributes and organs of the body, but makes it all wrap up as a whole as something meaningful. Like everything in the human body works and intertwines so does the poem in becoming something bigger than expected. In order to describe the sexuality he starts to describe the bodies of women and men within the passages. Women are known to be sexualized object upon the eyes of men. When Whitman starts saying the "divine nimbus" he starts talking about the sexual attraction he has to them and the fact that they are motherly like ”bath of birth." When he gets deeper into the poem he shows the sexual desire of women in there "mad filaments" basically describing the appeal of the slightest look of the body given from a women. This all shows the un equal ness that is given to the women by the looks of men and the fact that they tend to throw women into the category of sexual objects. He talks deeply about the temptation of omens body that shows the difference of how men felt with how unequal things were back then. When Whitman then starts talking about, "Ebb stung" and end with "delirious jui...

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...on has and all that thy can do is one of the ways they use the body for selling. If they are capable and able to give birth for many generations of slaves. The body is a sanctuary of the future. “The body can connect both erotically and spiritually with the bodies of others. In all this, the role of the body as the conduit between the soul and the world remains crucial.” All the focus is on the body of a woman and a little of the man. “Whitman finds a link, an identity, between the erotic body and the body politic. For if "the man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred," then all bodies are sacred—even those which belong to the "dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf."” Whitmans works is just trying to find the balance of the whole ordeal of attributes toward the slavery industry. He is against it but still talks about it showing the humanity of it.