Disparity Between Life And Death In Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself
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Walt Whitman delineates the disparity between life and death in his epic poem titled “Song Of Myself.” In section six Mr. Whitman thoroughly explains his metaphor of grass. He expertly portrays how the deceased support the living physically and metaphorically. For instance, the narrator describes grass as a symbol of his “hopeful disposition.” The first stanza of Walt Whitman’s “Song Of Myself” starts off with a young boy asking the narrator a l question, “What is the grass?.” This seems to be a question that the narrator is unable to answer. This is evident when the narrator remarks “I do not know what it is any more than he.” Walt Whitman strongly implies that the word “grass” has a philosophical meaning. As the poem continues the narrator compares grass to being “the handkerchief of the Lord.” Furthermore, Whitman is elucidating how the Lord covers the earth’s surface with grass to cover something up. A major theme is…show more content… The idea of this quotation is that things are always being born and dying so often that the grass must there to cover graves. Most importantly, this stanza is a metaphor stating that the soil itself is a grave and that everyone reaches it eventually. In the seventh stanza the narrator tries to imagine all the people that might be buried under the grass. Whether they were young men, children or old mothers. “It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men / It may be if I had known them I would have loved them / It may be you are from old people.” Additionally, in lines one hundred and nineteen and one hundred and twenty, Whitman writes that the narrator wishes he could decipher the last words of the dying before they head to their graves. “ I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,” and most importantly, “ I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and