Paradise Lost And Song Of Myself Comparison Essay

Book II of Paradise Lost and Song of Myself upon first read, come across strikingly different. It’s easier to point out more differences than similarities, but these authors use different structures to get across to the reader in the same way. Milton uses blank verse while Whitman uses free verse, which separates their work in itself. Allusion, anaphora, rhetorical questions, language, and personification are the linking devices between the poems. Though they exhibit their own structures, Milton and Whitman fuse these formal qualities together to create intertwining themes.

The theme of Identity comes in many forms between the two poems, but using allusion and storytelling the writers ironically share the same identity. Milton writes using iambic pentameter, while Whitman writes in free verse. This makes a colossal difference in the interpretation and reading

The experience of their life has also become the readers. Whitman publishes, “There was never any more inception than there is now, nor any more youth or age than there is now, and will never be any more perfection than there is now, nor any more heaven or hell than there is now (Ch4 line 4-7)”. “Now” is being used at the end of each line, emphasizing the meaning of the present. Word choice throughout this verse is very interpretive and thought provoking. Unlike in the analyzation of the theme identity, where the authors challenge the reader to share their identity while reading, they give the reader a chance to examine their own experiences. A key match in subject found in Whitman’s poem, originating from Milton’s was the entrance of “heaven and hell”. A subject big enough that the formal quality of anaphora used between the two texts, has an underlying reference to the poems as a whole. Milton records, “To be no more... Though full of pain, this intellectual being, those thoughts that under through eternity, to perish