Walt Whitman Connection

I do find this poem interesting, not because of the many details that Whitman includes to broaden the scene (I, myself, find that repetition tedious) but because of the main idea of the poem. Whitman says that whatever the boy in his poem looks at, he becomes. At first this sounds pretty odd, but as Whitman continues with this idea, it starts to make sense. A lot of who we are can be attributed to our environment. Therefore, the things around us do change us, at least to a certain extent.

Whitman especially makes this clear when speaking of the boy's parents. The boy gleans all of his outward personality from his parents because he's around them the most.

There was one line that I did connect with in particular:

"...the sense of what is real, the
thought if after all it should prove unreal..."

I have spent a good deal of my thought life wondering the same question. To see it referenced really did touch me, I guess. Most people take what they see in their day-to-day lives for what it appears to be, on the whole. This is necessary, or they could not function in our world (for example, if you wander around trying to prove the world to be real, and not working or something, you could lose your job. If you question whether your food is poisoned at every meal, you may never eat at all). However, I think many people don't even recognize the possibility of our world being illusion, since it's so rarely referred to outside of philosophy and sometimes poetry. I think it's refreshing that Whitman did recognize this--although I'm a bit puzzled as to how it fits into the poem's context.

I guess Whitman is trying to speak for all people, again, and assumes that everyone questions reality at some point in their lives, which for all I know is true. It would make sense.

Anti/Transcendental Writers

I prefer the anti-transcendental writers. From what we've read of them, not only do I enjoy their writing more in general, I think they're more realistic than the transcendental writers, on the whole. The transcendentalists seem really idealistic to me. I know that people are sometimes killed by nature, as they are in "developed" areas as well--but therefore, nature is not always good. It sometimes is survival of the fittest. Nature isn't a clean, well-kept-up park--it's a home for predators and prey alike.

People, likewise, are not always good. Some people may argue that humans are good at their core, but I don't think most people would disagree with me when I say that sometimes people do do bad things. Humans can be as dangerous as nature is, if not more dangerous.

The last transcendental belief, that the truth can always be found, doesn't always hold up either. True, the Bible says that all of our works will someday be revealed--but I don't think that's what the transcendentalists mean. Even if it is, then the transcendentalists are one for three.

And there are plenty of unsolved mysteries in the world that we, as individuals, may die before understanding.

Thus, in my mind, the anti-transcendentalists are more often accurate.