Recent update
- Where I found Whitman!
- Conclusion
- Fort Greene, for Dec 01, oatakan
- America by Whitman and Jeans by Levi Strauss, oatakan for Nov 17th
- Old, Cold and Cool Place by oatakan, Nov 10
- Whitman talks to You! Oatakan for Nov 3rd
- Whitman’s Brooklyn
- Oatakan for October 20th (Sea of Long Island)
- Oct 13th, oatakan
- oatakan, oct 6th, Whitman’s Manhattan
oatakan / sep 22nd
September 20th, 2009 by oatakan
My recent posts and comments, I was wondering about Whitman’s education. I even had questions on my comments to other fellow students about his education, like what a talent of a person on using words in an enchanting way to express feelings and thoughts. By the time of reading leaves of grass, I started to get more curious about Whitman’s life, therefore I am so into finding about what he has been through in his life and as a reflection these creative writing (his amazing work) came up. I have recently found this information about his self education one of the pages about Whitman and I think this would be useful to share.
“By the age of eleven, Whitman was done with his formal education (by this time he had far more schooling than either of his parents had received), and he began his life as a laborer, working first as an office boy for some prominent Brooklyn lawyers, who gave him a subscription to a circulating library, where his self-education began. Always an autodidact, Whitman absorbed an eclectic but wide-ranging education through his visits to museums, his nonstop reading, and his penchant for engaging everyone he met in conversation and debate. While most other major writers of his time enjoyed highly structured, classical educations at private institutions, Whitman forged his own rough and informal curriculum of literature, theater, history, geography, music, and archeology out of the developing public resources of America’s fastest growing city. http://whitmanarchive.org/biography/walt_whitman/index.html#education
At first, I thought he definitely had someone in his life courage him to study, advising and directing, however based on information above we can see that he was self motivated who had passion on learning and writing.
In last class we had, there was this discussion about some of his lines, which were about slaves during the time. His line started as “The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside…(p37) and he continues that briefly saying he took care of the slave by giving him a room and clothes. Based on these lines I thought of Whitman as brave for helping a slave and concerned of human rights, not racist and had an image of being enlightened. During the time slavery was legal in USA, I also found a short info about slavery and history of it on Wikipedia that as follows; “From 1654 until 1865, slavery for life was legal within the boundaries of much of the present United States.[6] Most slaves were black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks also held slaves; there was a small number of white slaves as well. The majority of slaveholders were in the southern United States, where most slaves were engaged in an efficient machine-like gang system of agriculture, with farms of fifteen or more slaves proving to be far more productive than farms without slaves. According to the 1860 U.S. census, nearly four million slaves were held in a total population of just over 12 million in the 15 states in which slavery was legal.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States
In relation to slavery he explain his ideas in his lines perfectly and talks to people how he defends equality between people.
I am the poet of the body
And I am the poet of the soul
I go with the slaves of the earth equally with the masters
And I will stand between the masters and the slaves,
Entering into both so that both shall understand me alike.
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