2.1: Song of the Open Road: By Walt Whitman
Q1. What does Song of the Open Road
mean?
Song of the Open Road,
poem by Walt Whitman, first published in the second edition of Leaves of Grass
in 1856. The 15-stanza poem is an optimistic paean to wanderlust. Whitman
exalts the carefree pleasures of traveling, encouraging others to break free
from their stifling domestic attachments to join him.
Q2. What is the theme of song of the
open road?
Major Themes in “Song of
the Open Road”: Freedom, joy, and optimism are the major themes of this
poem. Throughout the poem, the poet encourages the readers to be true to
themselves and live a free life.
Q3. What poetic form is used in
Whitman's Song of the Open Road?
The poem utilizes
free verse; the lines are unrhymed and of varying lengths. Song of the
Open Road is told from a first person point of view, and the speaker,
perhaps Whitman, knows himself very well. In the first stanza, the speaker
begins his journey.
Q4. How does the Speaker of song of the
open road feel?
From this stanza, the reader
is able to glean several important points: first, the speaker is
setting out on the open road on foot. Secondly, he is light-hearted
and open to all he is about to experience. Additionally,
the speaker recognizes that it is he who is in control of his
journey.
Q5. Who is Camerado in Whitman?
A camerado is Whitman's own
term for a friend, or comrade.
Q6. When did Walt Whitman write song of
the open road?
In 1856
Plot / Synopsis:
The poem can be split in two
parts, Sections 1-8 and Sections 9-15. During the first part, Whitman describes
the open road “as a metaphorical journey characterized by freedom, independence
and affirmations of self, time and place” (Kreidler). During this part, Whitman
notices how everything is as it should be. He realizes that along the journey
one will face a test of wisdom, but, as stated by Kreidler, “Whitman says, ‘not
[the wisdom] finally tested in schools’ (92); rather, the wisdom of the soul,
revealed through provoking questions, experiences in nature, and experiences
along the journey. Further, he avers happiness is the ‘efflux of the soul,’
flowing out, and ‘falls distilled the charm that mocks beauty and attainment’”
(143). During part two, Whitman welcomes company along his journey by repeating
“the word ‘Allons’ meaning ‘We go’ or ‘Let's go,’” (Kreidler).
Key Concepts:
The historical context
found in “Song of The Open Road” is describing the westward expansion of the
United States, “ an era characterized by the call of adventure and opportunity
for those courageous enough make the journey west, i.e. to follow the open road,”
(Kreidler). Kreidler discussed how Whitman was greatly influenced by politics
and political movements. Using the westward expansion as inspiration in this
piece allowed for Whitman’s audience to better understand and relate to this
poem. Whitman also incorporates some religious contexts, like referencing
Swedenborgianism. Kreidler explains that, “Swedenborgianism espoused a belief
that a spiritual component existed within every living and material being.
Swedenborg also believed that every part of the body held a particular
communication with the Divine.” In Whitman’s poem the readers can see this
belief when he starts to introduce the “Song” in Section 7, “Here is the efflux
of the soul; / The efflux of the soul comes from within through embowered gates,
ever provoking questions.”
Symbolism:
In Whitman’s poem,
the reader can find symbolism through the journey of life and the open,
democratic society of that time. In the first 8 sections of the poem, Whitman
observes the freedoms in life shown through the open road, “Afoot and
light-hearted I take to the open road; Healthy, free, the world before me; The
long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.” Whitman wants his readers
to feel free while reading this, and he wants them to know that he wrote this
poem to ensure the feeling of freedom upon them.
The Ending:
Whitman ends his poem “with the persona
awaiting an affirmative response from his reader” (Kummings). The narrator in
his poem reaches his hand out to the reader and asks them to join him on the
journey. Whitman added this as his poem ending to make the reader question,
“will they join him on this journey through the open road?”(Kummings). It is
almost as if the narrator doesn’t want to complete the journey of life on his
own; he wants the company. This is not a common approach in poem endings, but
Whitman also wants to make his readers question, “do you want to complete the
journey alone, or do you want to accompany someone for the rest of your life's
journey?” By leaving his readers questioning their life choices, Whitman is
able to help them figure out their life in a way.
Summary
of Song
of the Open Road:
The Speaker of the
poem is describing a trip on which he is embarking. He describes himself as
being “healthy and free,” and he realizes he is the only person who is in
complete control of his life; he chooses his own destiny. Because of this
realization, he does not have to wish or hope or pray for good fortune. He
attests that he, himself, is his own good fortune, and that is all he needs.
There is nothing that he is lacking. He will reach his destination on his own,
and the earth will provide him with anything extra that is necessary. This is
not to say that the road he is taking is not paved with imperfections and
burdens. Rather than worry, however, the speaker has decided to take those
burdens with him and deal with them as they arise.
Analysis
of Song
of the Open Road:
Whitman separates his poem into
four separate stanzas. With the exception of the first stanza, which contains
only three lines, the other stanzas contain four lines of verse. The poet
utilizes ‘Free Verse’ technique in
the poem, the lines are unrhymed and of varying lengths. “Song of the Open Road” is
told from a point of view, and the speaker, perhaps Whitman, knows
himself very well.
In the first stanza, the speaker
begins his journey. Whitman writes:
“Afoot and light-hearted I take
to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world
before me,
The long brown path before me
leading wherever I choose.”
From this stanza, the reader is
able to glean several important points: first, the speaker is setting out on
the open road on foot. Secondly, he is light-hearted and open to all he is
about to experience. Additionally, the speaker recognizes that it is he who is in
control of his journey. He will choose where the path will take him on his
journey.
The second stanza continues the
thoughts expressed in the first three lines. Whitman writes:
Henceforth I ask not
good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune
Henceforth I whimper no more,
postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints,
libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content, I travel the
open road.
The speaker says that he does not
have to pray for good luck because he is the maker of his own luck. He will no
longer cry or hesitate to do what he wants because he is in need of nothing. He
is no longer content with being walled inside; he is strong and happy to be on
the open road. In line six, Whitman writes of “querulous criticisms.” The use
of Alliteration here emphasizes the speaker’s carefree tone
which is continued throughout the course of Song of the
Open Road.
In the third stanza, Whitman
makes reference to the earth and stars. He writes:
The
earth, that is sufficient,
I do not
want the constellations any nearer,
I know they
are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those
who belong to them.
Here, the speaker seems to
separate himself from others. He says the earth is fine the way it is; he does
not desire to be any closer to the stars than he already is. He knows they are
fine where they are, and he knows they are good enough for those who belong to
them. This last line is in strong contrast to the rest of the poem, where the
speaker emphasizes his free will and independence, which means he probably does
not include himself in the group of people who belong to the constellations. He
does not belong to them because he does not need them.
The fourth stanza is
physically separated from the rest of the poem by Whitman’s use of parentheses.
He writes:
(Still
I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry
them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of
them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in
return.)
Whitman’s use of parentheses here
makes the stanza more of an aside than its own separate being; it is almost an
afterthought that the speaker decides to throw in, but it is still important
to Song
of the Open Road. Here, the speaker admits that he is not without
his own problems, but instead of fretting, he relishes them. The reader can see
this through Whitman’s diction. His use of the word delicious is no accident;
through that word, Whitman conveys the sense of relish the speaker feels for
his burden. In the second line of the final stanza, the speaker admits to all
that he carries them with him wherever he goes; this thought is continued in
the final two lines of the poem. The speaker declares that he cannot rid
himself of them; instead, he and his burdens share a symbiotic relationship of
sorts: he is filled with his burdens, and in return, he fills them. The speaker
is stating here that his burdens do not define him; rather, he accepts them and
carries them with him wherever he goes.
Historical
Significance:
Like many of the poems contained
in Whitman’s seminal work, Leaves of Grass, this poem is an Ode to
one’s self. Whitman revels in his own independence and ability to control his
life, and this idea of self-determinism has continued to influence readers
since the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855.
Themes:
1)
Democracy As a Way of Life:
Whitman envisioned democracy not
just as a political system but as a way of experiencing the world. In the early
nineteenth century, people still harbored many doubts about whether the United
States could survive as a country and about whether democracy could thrive as a
political system. To allay those fears and to praise democracy, Whitman tried
to be democratic in both life and poetry. He imagined democracy as a way of
interpersonal interaction and as a way for individuals to integrate their
beliefs into their everyday lives. “Song of Myself” notes that democracy must
include all individuals equally, or else it will fail.
In his poetry, Whitman widened
the possibilities of Poetic diction by including slang,
colloquialisms, and regional dialects, rather than employing the stiff, erudite
language so often found in nineteenth-century verse. Similarly, he broadened
the possibilities of subject matter by describing myriad people and places.
Like William Wordsworth, Whitman believed that everyday life and everyday
people were fit subjects for poetry. Although much of Whitman’s work does not
explicitly discuss politics, most of it implicitly deals with democracy: it
describes communities of people coming together, and it imagines many voices
pouring into a unified whole. For Whitman, democracy was an idea that could and
should permeate the world beyond politics, making itself felt in the ways we
think, speak, work, fight, and even make art.
2)
The Cycle of Growth and Death:
Whitman’s poetry reflects the
vitality and growth of the early United States. During the nineteenth century,
America expanded at a tremendous rate, and its growth and potential seemed
limitless. But sectionalism and the violence of the Civil War threatened to
break apart and destroy the boundless possibilities of the United States. As a
way of dealing with both the population growth and the massive deaths during
the Civil War, Whitman focused on the life cycles of individuals: people are
born, they age and reproduce, and they die. Such poems as “When Lilacs Last in
the Dooryard Bloomed” imagine death as an integral part of life. The Speaker of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”
realizes that flowers die in the winter, but they rebloom in the springtime,
and he vows to mourn his fallen friends every year just as new buds are
appearing. Describing the life cycle of nature helped Whitman contextualize the
severe injuries and trauma he witnessed during the Civil War—linking death to
life helped give the deaths of so many soldiers meaning.
3)
The Beauty of the Individual:
Throughout his poetry, Whitman
praised the individual. He imagined a democratic nation as a unified whole
composed of unique but equal individuals. “Song of Myself” opens in a
triumphant paean to the individual: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” (1). Elsewhere the speaker of that exuberant poem
identifies himself as Walt Whitman and claims that, through him, the voices of
many will speak. In this way, many individuals make up the individual
democracy, a single entity composed of myriad parts. Every voice and every part
will carry the same weight within the single democracy—and thus every voice and
every individual is equally beautiful. Despite this pluralist view, Whitman
still singled out specific individuals for praise in his poetry, particularly
Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, Lincoln was
assassinated, and Whitman began composing several Elegies,
including “O Captain! My Captain!” Although all individuals were beautiful and
worthy of praise, some individuals merited their own poems because of their
contributions to society and democracy.
Motifs:
1)
Lists:
Whitman filled his poetry with
long lists. Often a sentence will be broken into many clauses, separated by
commas, and each clause will describe some scene, person, or object. These
lists create a sense of expansiveness in the poem, as they mirror the growth of
the United States. Also, these lists layer images atop one another to reflect
the diversity of American landscapes and people. In “Song of Myself,” for
example, the speaker lists several adjectives to describe Walt Whitman in
section 24. The speaker uses
multiple adjectives to demonstrate the complexity of the individual: true
individuals cannot be described using just one or two words. Later in this
section, the speaker also lists the different types of voices who speak through
Whitman. Lists are another way of demonstrating democracy in action: in lists,
all items possess equal weight, and no item is more important than another item
in the list. In a democracy, all individuals possess equal weight, and no
individual is more important than another.
2)
The Human Body:
Whitman’s poetry revels in its
depictions of the human body and the body’s capacity for physical contact. The
speaker of “Song of Myself” claims that “copulation is no more rank to me than
death is” (521) to
demonstrate the naturalness of taking pleasure in the body’s physical
possibilities. With physical contact comes spiritual communion: two touching
bodies form one individual unit of togetherness. Several poems praise the
bodies of both women and men, describing them at work, at play, and
interacting. The speaker of “I Sing the Body Electric” (1855) boldly praises the perfection of the human
form and worships the body because the body houses the soul. This free
expression of sexuality horrified some of Whitman’s early readers, and Whitman
was fired from his job at the Indian Bureau in 1865 because the secretary of the interior
found Leaves of Grass offensive. Whitman’s unabashed
praise of the male form has led many critics to argue that he was homosexual or
bisexual, but the repressive culture of the nineteenth century prevented him
from truly expressing those feelings in his work.
3)
Rhythm and Incantation:
Many of Whitman’s poems rely
on Rhythm and repetition to create a captivating,
spellbinding quality of incantation. Often, Whitman begins several lines in a
row with the same word or phrase, a literary device called Anaphora. For example, the first four lines of “When I
Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” (1865) each begin
with the word when. The long lines of such poems
as “Song of Myself” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” force
readers to inhale several bits of text without pausing for breath, and this
breathlessness contributes to the incantatory quality of the poems. Generally,
the anaphora and the rhythm transform the poems into celebratory chants, and
the joyous form and structure reflect the joyousness of the poetic content.
Elsewhere, however, the repetition and rhythm contribute to an elegiac tone, as
in “O Captain! My Captain!” This poem uses short lines and words, such as heart and father, to
mournfully incant an elegy for the assassinated Abraham Lincoln.
Symbols:
1)
Plants:
Throughout Whitman’s poetry,
plant life symbolizes both growth and multiplicity. Rapid, regular plant growth
also stands in for the rapid, regular expansion of the population of the United
States. In “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman uses flowers,
bushes, wheat, trees, and other plant life to signify the possibilities of
regeneration and re-growth after death. As the speaker mourns the loss of
Lincoln, he drops a lilac spray onto the coffin; the act of laying a flower on
the coffin not only honors the person who has died but lends death a measure of
dignity and respect. The title Leaves of Grass highlights
another of Whitman’s themes: the beauty of the individual. Each leaf or blade
of grass possesses its own distinct beauty, and together the blades form a beautiful,
unified whole, an idea Whitman explores in the sixth section of “Song of
Myself.” Multiple leaves of grass thus symbolize democracy, another instance of
a beautiful whole composed of individual parts. In 1860, Whitman published an edition of Leaves of Grass that included a number of poems
celebrating love between men. He titled this section “The Calamus Poems,” after
the phallic calamus plant.
2)
The Self:
Whitman’s interest in the self
ties into his praise of the individual. Whitman links the self to the
conception of poetry throughout his work, envisioning the self as the
birthplace of poetry. Most of his poems are spoken from the first person, using
the pronoun I. The speaker of Whitman’s most
famous poem, “Song of Myself,” even assumes the name Walt Whitman, but
nevertheless the speaker remains a fictional creation employed by the poet
Whitman. Although Whitman borrows from his own autobiography for some of the
speaker’s experiences, he also borrows many experiences from popular works of
art, music, and literature. Repeatedly the speaker of this poem exclaims that
he contains everything and everyone, which is a way for Whitman to reimagine
the boundary between the self and the world. By imaging a person capable of
carrying the entire world within him, Whitman can create an elaborate analogy
about the ideal democracy, which would, like the self, be capable of containing
the whole world.
Some Questions
Q1. Describe
Whitman’s conceptions of the soul and the body, and the relationship between
the two. Which is more important, in his view?
The soul and the body
are inextricably linked for Whitman. While the soul is the ultimate repository
of the self, and connection between souls is the highest order of relating, the
body is the vessel that allows the soul to experience the world. Therefore the
body is just as important. This is why he says in “Starting from Paumanok” that
he will make his poems from the body and from material things, for the soul
will follow from those. The body is also the source of identity in the world
and the means for connection to others. Thus in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” he
speaks of the body as one’s identity: it is the means by which different
generations can experience the same thing (in this case the ferry crossing).
Whitman values both the soul and the body, but the body is much easier to work
with.
Q2. How do you account for the eroticism in Whitman’s
poetry? Does he use homosexual eroticism differently from heterosexual eroticism?
Eroticism, in Whitman’s poetry,
symbolizes the profound but always incomplete communion between people. Sex is
as close as two people can get to becoming one, but the physical body, while it
enables this closeness, is also a barrier to complete connection. Heterosexual
eroticism is often used to discuss childbearing, which comes out of the same
generative process that creates poetry. Homoeroticism, since it is purely about
the connection between two people and has no biological function, can be used
to talk about a broader range of ideas. In particular, homoeroticism comes to
symbolize the kind of valorization of the body and the kind of sympathetic
connection between people that Whitman values most.
Q3. What
kinds of structures does Whitman use in his poetry? Why might he be using these
rather than traditional structures like rhyme?
Two of the most important
structures in Whitman’s poetry are the list and the anecdote. The list enables
Whitman to present a great number of disparate items without having to make any
claims as to their relative worth; this is a truly democratic way of presenting
material. It is also an easy way for him to go about cataloguing America, a
nation that is raw material for poetry. Anecdotes, on the other hand, are a way
for him to demonstrate the kind of sympathetic experience he hopes his poetry
will be. When he presents a story he’s heard from another, he presents it as
something that has become so real to him that he feels he has experienced it
himself. This kind of intense connection between people is the goal of
Whitman’s poetry. He avoids traditional structures like rhyme because he wants
to show that his is a truly American poetry, one that is fresh and new, and not
indebted to previous poets from other countries.
