Whitman And Transcendentalism

Self-Reliance: a Non-Orthodox Approach to Total Liberty

In the 19th century, an intellectual movement known as, “Transcendentalism,” inspired many of the great American writers. Some key components of Transcendentalism in American literature include: the belief that mankind and nature are one, single unit, and the belief that man is most free when he is self-reliant. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American writer who was one of the first authors to discuss Transcendentalism, wrote, “Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

However, before Whitman walked the streets of Manhattan, he made connections between himself and nature, a transcendenic moment. In “A Noiseless, Patient, Spider,” He said, “ A NOISELESS, patient, spider… it launced forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself… And you, oh my soul, where you stand, Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space”. In this passage, Whitman finds similarities between his soul and the spider. He finds his soul surrounded by life’s mysteries as a spider’s web surrounds its food. This is significant since this shows that Whitman has gone through a trnascendenic moment, and has started to show signs of mental

He describes the various sounds he heard when he walked the streets of New York. This is an example of how Whitman expressed the body in his poetry: by showing emotional appeal to the auditory sense.

Continuing with the theme of Whitman’s freedom of expression, he describes the energy exerted into the city. Using the words, “young, robust, and friendly,” Whitman delivers a feeling of excitement and energy within the poem. These key words help to express the human body, which is what Whitman wanted to achieve through his observations of the Streets of New York City.

Through each of their unique experiences, Douglass, Dickinson, and Whitman also freed their minds through self-reliant thought, which led to their ultimate physical freedom. Douglass experienced a freedom of conscience by learning to read, and ultimately ended up freeing his body from slavery because of this. Dickinson used her observations in nature to create freedom of conscience, which led to her self-reliance as a strong, independent woman in New England. Finally, Whitman used his observation in New York to express the human body in his poetry. Based on their journey in becoming a self-reliant thinker, Frederick Douglass can be considered the best self-reliant thinker. He taught himself to read, which eventually led him