The Political Power of Literature
One of the propositions which Whitman explores throughout the text is that American must establish a national literature which expounds its democratic ideals as a key to becoming a legendary power. He uses imagery to establish that the great powers of the ancient world are only known today as a result of literary output:
“Few are aware how the great literature penetrates all, gives hue to all, shapes aggregates and individuals, and, after subtle ways, with irresistible power, constructs, sustains, demolishes at will. Why tower, in reminiscence, above all the nations of the earth, two special lands, petty in themselves, yet inexpressibly gigantic, beautiful, columnar? Immortal Judah lives, and Greece immortal lives, in a couple of poems.”
The Post-War Doom
Whitman characterizes the American of the post-Reconstruction Gilded Age as one lacking a fundamental decency which it knew—in spite of slavery—as the status quo. Engaging the metaphorical imagery of microscope capable of examining morality rather than microbes, Whitman presents the findings of this examination as equally pestilential:
“…using the moral microscope upon humanity, a...flat Sahara appears...crowded with petty grotesques, malformations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics…everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, bar-room, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity—everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe -- everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood deceasing or deceas'd, shallow notions of beauty, with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners...probably the meanest to be seen in the world.”
The Peacemaker
In describing a woman known by his mother who was referred to simply as the Peacemaker, Whitman culls together all his momentous talent for creating poetry from imagery to bring the woman to life through descriptive prose. Separated, rearranged, shelved into stanza form, the entire paragraph could be easily transition into an example of Whitmanesque verse:
“She was well toward eighty years old, of happy and sunny temperament, had always lived on a farm, and was very neighborly, sensible and discreet, an invariable and welcom'd favorite, especially with young married women…uneducated, but possess'd a native dignity…tacitly agreed upon domestic regulator, judge, settler of difficulties, shepherdess, and reconciler in the land…a sight to draw near and look upon, with her large figure, her profuse snow-white hair, (uncoif'd by any head-dress or cap,) dark eyes, clear complexion, sweet breath, and peculiar personal magnetism.”
The Depravity of Business Classes
Whitman calls for Americans to turn an unblinking eye inward to honestly assess where the country has arrived at from where it stood not too long before. What they will, he goes on to delineate, is an ugly but truthful portrait of a democratic government which has become inextricably intertwined with an appallingly hypocritical power, corruption and lies of a new, more extreme form of capitalism:
“The official services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain.”
