Walt Whitman Transcendentalism Essay

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Born to a large, poor family in 1819, Walter Whitman was not thought to be anything special. He struggled financially for most of his early life, floating from job to job all around New York. Through all this time, however, he was experiencing and learning things that would greatly inspire him as he began writing poetry. His first major publication, “Leaves of Grass” earned him worldwide fame as many admired his practical writing style. They donned him “The Common Man”, a nickname that would survive the rest of his life. In the infancy of America, nationalistic pride was on full display. Inspired by these feelings, many pillars of Transcendentalism is very prominent in his early works. However, later in his life, Whitman’s poetry takes on a …show more content…

By describing the traits of a woman in this positive manner, he is empowering women along the Democratic ideals of our nation. Also, we see the mention of the “soul” in this passage. Later on in the poem, Whitman begins a lengthy catalogue of all the bodily and emotional features of a human body. He declares at the end, “O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the Soul, / O I say now these are the Soul!” A major facet of Transcendentalism is the interconnectedness of nature and the soul. In this poem, Whitman is commentating on how “The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud, / Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, walking, swimming…” and other daily functions we perform come together and form the basic fabric of our existence: our soul. In many of his works, Whitman took the pillars of Transcendentalism and used them in a way that Americans would find applicable and

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