Section+11

Section 11 of //Song of Myself// stresses the acceptance of all men, living or dead, for every being is connected through nature.

The speaker begins section eleven with the repetition of “twenty-eight.” (192). This parallelism relates the image of dead, young soldiers to the caring nature of the women, depicting the idea of unconditional love with those who are poor, downtrodden, and “homeliest” (197). When he describes the men as groups of “twenty-eight young men” he causes them to not be thought of as individuals but as nameless figures. The speaker later rejoices in this when he points out that “the homeliest of them is beautiful to her” (197). The speaker introduces the normality of the unknown men by referring to them as homely, yet at the same time attractive, contrary to the beliefs generally held by society, embracing them as beautiful and furthering his theme of acceptance of everyone and pride in oneself. Through this paradox, Whitman declares his theme that we must be proud of what we are and have pride in what others are as well. The determiner “all” (200) is used twice making the men seem common, yet connected, contributing to the idea that they are unified in death.

When the speaker says that the “homeliest” (205), or most unattractive one, is the woman’s favorite, he portrays Whitman’s’ idea of overlooking physical characteristics and accepting people for who they are. The speaker states that “the rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them” (201). This further exemplifies the idea of unconditional love and love of the dead.

When the speaker says “The young men float on their backs – their white bellies bulge to the sun” (206) he points out that they are dead, as dead people are often described as floating on their backs, and normally after death a person’s stomach becomes bloated and begins to bulge. By saying “they do not ask who/seizes fast to them” (206-07) the speaker demonstrates the way in which although the woman’s love for the men is unseen by anyone but her, it is not marred, for she has pride in what these men are and loves them for it.

In the lines, "Little streams pass'd all over their bodies/An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies" (211-12, the speaker uses the word “pass’d” (211) twice, once describing streams passing over the bodies, and once describing a hand. The use of the apostrophe draws attention to this word which creates a sense of the over soul, or something that is present unifying everyone. The parallelism used with this word connects nature and humans together. This correlation depicts the idea of the over soul or “unseen hand” (212) guiding humans toward nature. Overall, the hand is a representation of the over-soul, which holds all things in nature together as one.



Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. Shorter 6th ed. New York: Norton, 2003. 1003-47.