Walt Whitman may have confused many of his readers the first few times they’ve read his poems.  Considering his work was never meant to be read fast. I feel as if it was meant to be read slow and comprehensive. In “Song of Myself” he constantly switches roles between an advice giver, a very demanding person and a confused individual. Many times in the poem he makes himself feel higher than all gods possible. In the 19Th century the Church was the most powerful source. However, when Whitman was being the “advice giver” he told his reader and himself that they have to look at themselves as something higher than that. He took quite a risk writing those lined above in his poems but that was how he was able to get his message across. I chose this image because its a photo of a church in the 19Th century in Brooklyn Heights where Whitman grew up.

“The quadroon girl is sold at the sand…”

During the 19th century in the south, the word quadroon was used to describe African American slaves who were racially mixed. This was basically what they called an offspring of a biracial couple. The couple had to be one where at least one parent was white and the other black or both parents were black and white. The definition of a quadroon is a person who is one-quarter black. Knowing the meaning of this word reminds you that slavery did in fact go on during this period of time and Whitman includes this in his work.

Sep 15th  Oatakan (image gloss)

“I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe

…and am not contained between my hat and boots,

And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good.

The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of earth,

I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself

They do not know how immortal, but I know.”

American Heritage Dictionary (2)

Fathomless:

1. adjective Too deep to be fathomed or measured.
2. adjective Too obscure or complicated to be understood.

The word fathomless means “too deep to fathom” and with respect to the universe, this can be applied both to its physical depth, as well as to the difficulty in understanding its properties.

(www.fathomless.net)

  Since, I am struggling to understand his words and put them together to find out meaning of his lines ; (fathomless) is the perfect word to call Walt Whitman as well as he calls himself. I think in these lines he is trying to explain his existence  in a unique way. He tells about objects like  not one thing looks like another, however they complete each other.  Furthermore, he defines himself as being immortal and fathomless. In my opinion, he is not afraid to die and he accepts being complicated to be understood.

      The picture is US, Fantastic Pit in Georgia’s Ellison’s Cave, which I thought incredibly deep (fathomless) adjuncts with Whitman’s thoughts and work.

“I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west,
the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking,
they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets
hanging from their shoulders,
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his
luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride
by the hand,
She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks
descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her
feet” (p. 37).

I chose this passage because I was curious to know if it was common for trappers of the time to marry Native American women. Upon researching the matter I found that trappers often did because the women could translate between the white men and tribes, help with trapping and curing furs, and ward off raids. The part of the passage that most caught my eye was the line “the other hand held firmly the wrist of the red girl”. This brought to mind images of the white man’s possessive qualities as “his father and his friends sat near by cross legged and dumbly smoking”. In my research I found that while these marriages were not taboo, they were frowned upon. This may explain “dumbly” smoking. It’s as if the father and other men of the tribe wish to say more but do not.