Tuesday, January 6, 2015

"Song of Myself"


Literary Features:

-Repetition: in many of the beginning of the lines, the first few words are repeated.

EX. “Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?” (30).

-Imagery: in the poem, Whitman uses the five senses a lot, providing a lot of imagery

            EX. “The sniff of the green leaves…/The sound of the belch’d words…” (24-25).

-Metaphors: at around line 100, Whitman starts to compare grass to many different things.

            EX. “…the grass is itself a child…/Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic” (105-106).

 

Rhyme/Rhythm

-There is no rhyme scheme

-There is no specific rhythm

 

Structure

-Whitman seems to group together lines that are all about a certain topic

            EX. When he is talking about the grass, it is al grouped together

-Very long and lengthy

 

Tone/Mood

-The tone is motivation—he is motivating people to believe in themselves, and be okay with who they are

-The mood is encouraging—the audience feels encouraged to not listen to what society thinks of them, but to believe in who they think they are.

 
The message Whitman is trying to portray is the message that people should be the person that they truly are, and not to listen to anybody else. It is also about trying to find the person that you truly are. One part of the poem talks about different effects that happened throughout the person in the poem’s life. At the end of that, it talks about how you shouldn’t let the effects effect the person you are, but just effect your life. There is also another part that talks about not knowing what grass is. This is a symbol of people trying to figure out exactly who they are, and the journey that they take to get there.

1 comment:

  1. Song of Myself

    Rhyme/Rhythm: There is not any specific rhyme scheme to this poem although it does have rhythm due to the repetition of many words like myself, belonging or belongs, loafe, reckoned, perfume and plenty of others. There is also a lot of repetition of sounds and the amounts of syllables. For example; “echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine..” This line does not have any definite structure, but it has rhythm and flow.

    Tone/mood: Whitman’s mood shifts throughout the poem. I noticed that he has two main tones; the first is him expressing happiness and life and the second being death and sadness. The first is shown in lines when he refers to the things that bring him joy in small ways like perfume, the sun and love. The death is shown towards the end as he begins to refer to darkness, and starts to accept that death is coming. The beginning of the poem shows a lot of strength and power and the will to live a happy life, and the end shows that Whitman is beginning to lose his glow and urge to live.

    ReplyDelete