Wk 4 Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was an author who was attempting to create an American self and synthesize the "American exceptionalism." He represents a powerful spokesperson for the self, that is for feeling good about one's self, but a self that is not overly idealistic but that is good and bad. Especially in "One's Self I Sing," Whitman was trying to create a way to look at the world. In "Spontaneous Me," Whitman makes a bold step as a writer in that he celebrates physical love. Whitman does this more so than any other writer of his time. An example is on pg. 1056 of the Norton Anthology Vol. 1, "Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor... Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love, breasts of love, bellies press'd and glued together with love." Walt Whitman's goal, like Thorough and Emerson, was to wake up the living to do things that are only achieved through the body and mind and he did this through concrete things of the world and thoughts in his writing. Also in his writings he talks a lot about work but finishes it off with the importances of leaisure as well.