Reflection of Poems That Describe Whitman's Self

From these multiple poems, it is very easy to see the reflection of the idea of self that Whitman shoes in his poems. When Whitman expresses the idea of self, he stresses especially that society and nature combined, are all part of the present, the past and the future as well. Also, when reflecting on the idea of self, Whitman uses the similarities of man in multiple examples such as multiple people or even multiple findings in nature. To him these events and findings all reflect the simple idea of self, which he clearly shows in his writing.

For example, in the poem "Myself and Mine," Whitman relates the experiences of many and of himself to reflect the idea of self by the way he ties all of the ideas found in the poem into the point that he makes at the end, where he finally starts questioning the differences between two or even more personalities if they both feel the same way. He also starts to question the identities of the nameless beings that he speaks of within his poem and concludes the poem by basically showing the reader that he has actually just given many example of self within the poem and he has also described the very idea of self.

In the poem "One Song America, Before I Go," Whitman once again reflects his idea of self by the way in which he writes his poem. Since Whitman believed that self resembled not only the past or present, but also the future, this poem reflects the very idea that Whitman had of self. For example in the story, Whitman is describing almost of how he wants to describe to the nation that since thing have gone very well in the past for the nation and that also our nation has overcome many obstacles to get where we were when this poem was written, then the future is simple to predict for the country in the very eyes of Whitman because of the way he views self. Self not only reflect the present and the past, but also the future. This means that what Whitman really wants to "sing" to the nation before he goes is the fact that everything is going to be fine and dandy for the nation in the future because of the way that certain events unfolded in the past and because of the way that our nation learned to overcome certain obstacles.

One more example of how Whitman's idea of self is reflected in Whitman's poems is by the way that Whitman makes the final analogy in the poem "As I Watch'd The Ploughman Plouging." Within the final line of this short poem,. Whitman makes an analogy of how life relates to how much crop a farmer grow compared to the harvest at the end of each season which relates to death. This reflects the idea of realism by the way that he makes this analogy of nature to life and death. The basis for the idea of self is that not only life, but also nature goes into the idea, and since Whitman relates these two things together in the end of the poem, the poem relates to the idea of self.