Whitman's+Life

An understanding of Walt Whitman's life provides a better comprehension of the ideas he expresses in his works.

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills, Long Island, as the second oldest of eight children. Of the six male siblings, three of his brothers were named after presidents; they were Andrew Jackson Whitman, Thomas Jefferson Whitman, and George Washington Whitman. Walt himself inherited his father's name and his older brother Jesse inherited his grandfather's. The Whitman girls, Hannah and Mary, were given names of relatives. His youngest brother, Edward, who was mentally and physically disabled, did not carry a name connected to the country's or family's history.



Throughout his childhood, Whitman felt the greatest affection for his mother, Louisa Van Velsor. She was of Dutch and Welsh stock, while his father, Walter Whitman Sr., was English. He had a bond with her that helped him through many difficult times in his life. As Walt was growing up, the family started having issues with the other siblings. It began when the eldest son, Jesse, became mentally unstable. Jesse was institutionalized in a local ward after he became excessively violent. In addition, Hannah married an abusive husband and was stuck in a disastrous marriage with him. Andrew also married a prostitute after becoming an alcoholic, and then died in his 30s of ill health. Last but not least, Edward had to be relocated, as his conditions had worsened and he required much more intensive care.

Though born in Long Island, when Whitman was four years old, his family moved to Brooklyn, where due to bad investments the Whitman family lived in numerous living arrangements. Whitman would cross the river by ferry to get to New York, which inspired his poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”. Though he lived in Brooklyn, Whitman often visited his grandparents back in Long Island, which inspired him to write “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." Whitman was a writer who took commonplace events, and turned them into poetry. His keen sense of the world around him allowed his readers to better understand and relate to his works, although they were not always well received. See Whitman's Critics.

He was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a carpenter, but he changed his mind and surprised everyone around him by becoming a writer. Before becoming a writer, Whitman had various jobs, including teaching and working on many aspects of the newspaper industry. This kind of change early in his life shows a great amount of confidence, which is also reflected in Whitman’s writing. He was very sure of himself, so sure, that he decided to be a participant in a very forward thinking society.

This self-confidence was instilled in him even at a young age. He valued the individual mind and rejected traditional authority by quiting school at age eleven and experiencing the world first-hand. He gained his knowledge “through his visits to museums, his nonstop reading, and his penchant for engaging everyone he met in conversation and debate" ( [|"Walt Whitman"]). Even though Whitman stopped attending school early on, he began his unexpected teaching career in 1836 to 1838. Though it was not his preference to teach, Whitman accepted this profession because he wanted to escape working on the farm. Additionally, the harsh economic times forced him to enter this career. As a Transcendentalist, Whitman believed in breaking away from traditional authority and valued experience, causing him to teach with an unrestricted curriculum which promoted self growth and knowledge. He preferred that the students think aloud instead of learning to recite things. He included his students in activities which fostered creative thinking. His decision to quit school ultimately led him towards becoming a self-reliant thinker and impacted the way he demonstrated the authority in his writing.


 * [[image:Whitman8.jpg align="center" caption="The school at which Whitman taught while he lived in Queens from 1839-1841"]] ||

Because Whitman was highly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the transcendental beliefs of self value and nature as a source of goodness are popular in Whitman's poems. Through the different titles of his poems, Whitman also displays these key beliefs. Titles of the poems "Song of the Universal,” "Prayer of Columbus" and "Song of the Redwood-Tree,” reflect objects and other people. On the contrary, in 1856, “Song of Myself” was named "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American," illustrating his decision to focus the poem on himself and his personal life. After one of his students asked Whitman what grass was, he began to write this poem, further illustrating the value he has for nature.

In his teaching life, however, Whitman wished for students to express their own thoughts and ideas by speaking in class, as opposed to simply using rote memorization, and included his students in activities which fostered creative thinking. The teacher also kept personal journals regarding the acquiring of knowledge and other educational interests. Whitman’s teaching styles greatly resemble Ms. Thumm’s, for this literature teacher urges her students to find deeper meaning in each work read, and wishes nothing more than for her students to explore their own minds and the ideas within them. Similarly, Ms. Thumm keeps a blog on her Myspace page, in which she goes “Wondering about Wandering,” and explores the topic of learning of oneself through exploring his or her thoughts.

A primary influence in the development of Whitman's ideas grew out of his participation during the Civil War. During the Civil War, he worked as a freelance journalist, visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals. Eventually, he became touched by the soldiers and their suffering, and he decided to stay and work in the hospitals. After reassuring himself that his brother had not been killed in the war, but only wounded, Whitman encountered a ghastly sight of severed limbs, a memory that possibly devastated him as he admired and celebrated the human body. Not surprisingly, these soldiers and their stories had a dramatic effect on the writer and, ultimately, he conveyed his feelings about war in both prose and poetry. Whitman's experiences can be seen in the poem "Reconciliation", in which he searches for forgiveness for the war's harmful actions towards each other's brother. Still, this did not prevent Whitman from joining in on the Union's efforts where he continued his writings. During this time, Whitman performed miscellaneous errands, writing letters, and attempted to make the soldiers "whole again" ("To the Battlefield"). His work in hospitals and the literature that developed as a result of all he experienced was regarded positively, as opposed to his work in //Leaves of Grass//.

Whitman's international followers are best known for their position after "Walt Whitman's Actual Position" was written. Whitman hoped to gain more recognition in America by sending out the article, which was a letter that stated how Whitman's works were being ignored, to an American printing press, England, Ireland, Denmark, and other various European countries. It was then that people outside of America began criticizing America for their ignorance toward Whitman's literary works. This international debate, as it was known, was one of Whitman's first steps in gaining acclaim for his works in America and the rest of the world.

Whitman went through a Bohemian period, spending time at the Pfaff Salon in New York, where he met many people who greatly influenced his future writing, such as women who were activists for equal treatment of the sexes. Whitman was open to their ideas, showing that he was in no way prejudiced. By including these women's beliefs in his writing, Whitman became a major contributor to the women’s rights movement. In addition, Whitman was homosexual, which could have contributed to his belief in the equality of all people. Because the time period in which he was writing was much more conservative and he would have been ridiculed for being gay, Whitman went as far in denying his homosexuality as to claim that he had fathered six illegitimate children. Because Whitman was hiding an aspect of him that would make others treat him unfairly, he could better relate to other human beings who were discriminated against just based on who they were. This is possibly a reason why in his autobiography, Whitman glanced over a large portion of his life. Whitman's ideas were ahead of his time, and only recently homosexuals are making progress in their battle for acknowledgment and acceptance. Also, in many places of the world, especially the Middle East, women are still fighting for their rights, proving that the equal rights Whitman promoted are still being fought for today.

Whitman was more than a transcendentalist; he was a trend setter and equalizer. He, unlike those around him, respected African Americans and treated them as equals by including them into the central themes of his work. With an ancestral background in slave-owning, Whitman still felt it necessary to break the bonds of slavery and unite all people. He also had a large respect for women, which he portrayed in his writing, though the society surrounding him felt that women were wives and mothers only. Not only did he expand acceptance for those who are different in society, but he also popularized free verse poetry, which at first he was criticized for using because it seemed unrhythmic and disorganized.

Throughout his life, Walt Whitman experienced many situations which shaped the content of his poetry and other forms of writing. Whitman also kept personal journals regarding the acquiring of knowledge and other educational interests. These thoughts of learning translate into "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" because it shows the rejection of charts and diagrams for the experience of nature and the outside world.

However, with his genuine love for learning and intellectual betterment, he built from his basic knowledge and worked to receive countless literary jobs and to publish his works for use over 110 years after his death. Uncharacteristically, Whitman supported war through poems such as “Beat! Beat! Drums!” despite its toll on his brother George, injuring him severely. Although he saw daily the deaths caused by the Civil War while working at an infirmary and was emotionally hurt, he proceeded to write and publish poems which would eventually be used as recruitment methods, proving that these were supportive enough to evoke the will to serve one’s country in readers.

Whitman also spent much of his life visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals. He believed hospitals were central to the war and had a true passion for helping the wounded soldiers. Whitman said he wanted to make their sickness and confinement less monotonous. Had he not become a writer, he would have become a doctor, and often helped doctors perform surgeries. Whitman recorded many of the soldiers' anecdotes in journals. ([|http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=whitman&fileName=wwhit101.data&recNum=2)]

The most prominent experience in his life involving hospitals occurred when Whitman was just a young man during the Civil War. His brother was serving in the Union army and fought in the Battle of Fredericksburg. When Whitman scanned the list of dead from the battle, he noticed a name quite similar to that of his brother's. Worried that the name was merely a typo, and his brother might have been killed, he traveled to the battlefield in search of his brother. When he arrived, he found his brother to be alive with only a minor head wound. During this visit, Whitman had his first encounter with death and war. He saw a makeshift battlefield hospital with amputated limbs piled on the floor. The sight of this gore, and the sounds of dying men screaming in agony deeply touched Whitman and made a profound impact on him and his writing. He even remained on the battlefield for several days, volunteering his help in burying the dead bodies. After this experience, Whitman wrote more intimately and morbidly of the war in comparison to his earlier works such as "Beat! Beat! Drums!", which spoke from a more distant perspective.

Whitman also enjoyed attending the opera, which was not so uncommon; however, his incentive to go was unusual. He was inspired by them and enjoyed going to them because he loved the concept of voicing one’s own opinions. Whitman believes that all things, equally significant and different, can contribute as individuals to create a world of unity and equality.

Later in Whitman's lifetime, he received a visit from phrenologist Lorenzo Fowler. A phrenologist is a person that claims to be able to read the character of a person by looking at the shape of their skull. Whitman's belief in himself closely matched the analysis of Lorenzo Fowler.

Its is very ironic for Walt Whitman, a transcendentalist, to become a lecturer simply because of his beliefs. Essential transcendentalist concepts include the idea of looking to nature for knowledge and the rejection of certain authorities, especially that of society, thus it is very contradictory for Whitman to become a lecturer which draws his audience away from these ideas. Also, in his work “Song of Myself” he promotes the idea of looking to oneself for understanding, which is the opposite of what he promotes by lecturing, with the first line “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” (1). After observing this, my initial view of Whitman changed from being an extreme transcendentalist to a weaker, less passionate man. It seems that Whitman was joining the bandwagon by becoming a lecturer in 1858. Whitman became less unique and independent because he was doing as others did and not reaching the potential formerly established for him, as a stronger, less contradictory individual. Lastly, Whitman’s lectures did not inform his audience of transcendentalist ideals, rather they focused on the more appealing subjects of the time. More arguably, Whitman was a lecturer that contained his transcendentalist concepts. Walt Whitman was a lecturer who presented topics of interest and his own views but provided support for his audience, which allowed them to formulate their own personal beliefs. Through this, Whitman did not contradict his ideals and provided his audience with a truly personal experience. Intriguingly, Whitman “became a master of sexual politics.” Apparantly, his poem Leaves of Grass connected the body with the soul, calling sexual experiences as something not simply carnal, but spiritual as well. He was even described was having woven “together themes of manly love and sexual love.” Whitman wrote a series of poems under Calamus, which became influential in gay literature. Poems in Calamus displayed same-sex love between men, that was mildly sensual, such as hand-holding. Alongside this work, Whitman also wrote Children of Adam, depicting heterosexual love with graphic genitalia and sexual references. Surprisingly, Emerson and many other literary scholars of the time did not care so much about the homosexual undertones in Calamus, as they cared about the heterosexual, graphic content found in Children of Adam! It is shocking because in the modern, homophobic America, Calamus would probably be viewed as more offensive than Children of Adam. After all, the media in today’s society bombards individuals with sex and images, while discouraging homosexual relations. In this sense, society's opinions display the shift in America’s attitudes toward sexuality. Whitman’s work has become a testament to how we have grown more comfortable with sex and sexuality, but have developed negative ideals regarding homosexuality- something that was not as important only 150 years ago.

In the fall of 1848, Walt Whitman established a "free soil" newspaper, the "Brooklyn Freeman". After Whitman's //Leaves of Grass// was published, the Dean of American Letters thanked him for his wonderful style. Through his poem, Whitman also made himself known to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Whitman's //Leaves of Grass// is now known internationally, and it has been translated in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, China, and Japan.

For the final few months of his life, Whitman struggled greatly, and the only reason he lived during those months was due to his will and perseverance. However, during this time, he had made preparations for his death, including having a lavish tomb built in Camden's Harleigh Cemetery. Whitman died on March 26, 1892, while he was being cared for by Frederick Warren Fritzinger, a man who Whitman enjoyed being around. His final words were addressed to Fritzinger, and they were "Shift, Warry," a request to be moved in bed. Later, several members of his family were moved into the tomb which Whitman was buried in. The epitaph on the grave simply read "Walt Whitman."