The Fractured Self
F.R.R. Mallory
February 15, 2007

3,471 dangerous miles become the opportunity for the dispossessed to shed their European skins, to emerge virgin in a land where the rules are distant shadows, challenged by the sun. This is America, Walt Whitman's America, where the destiny of self isn't pre-caste in the womb. Born only 40 years apart, Whitman saw the same raw potential in his country that he saw in himself. With England too far to leverage its hold on societal structure and freedom still the sweet elixir of possibility, each man seemed to stand both inside and outside of his own identity. Whitman's poetry capitalized on this, eager perhaps to dance with the godhead itself. It is as if he stood upon the beach and endeavored to describe each grain of sand telling us, this is you, this is me, we are indistinguishable, we are utterly unique, both grain of sand and still, yet, beach.

By raising the individual parallel with all other individuals Whitman striped away the ladder's treads, urging us to climb, climb, climb, saying there are no shoulders to stand upon to reach the great expanse of sky. Just you, I, me. "As nature, inexorable, onward, resistless, impassive amid the threats and screams of disputants, so America" (Whitman 84). America sees itself as shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye, hand in hand. It claims the space of mob, both united and defiantly independent. He described the sand, claimed it for his own always knowing it slipped un-possessed through his fingers.

3,471 dangerous miles force self-reliance upon a nation. The message is simple enough, you are standing alone, figure it out or perish. When all individuals are parallel, each become large enough in their own perception to accept the challenge that self-reliance demands. Whitman's voice, by recognizing the size of each man's potential, informed the American identity that it could continue to explore the edges of what was possible, an idea that survives, somewhat battered, yet survives, into the present. By recognizing the individual's potential he exposed the vast collective potential of a nation that had to wear its own boots.

Clint Eastwood in his movie Heartbreak Ridge, urges his men to "improvise, adapt, overcome." This is pure Whitman speaking of consciousness, of self, of possibility, of freedom, of the opportunity offered by the birth of a virgin nation, unencumbered by its burden of history. You have nothing. No parents. Bastard child. No kings. No restraints. What can you do with it? Walk naked in the grass - walk naked and there, right there, in that dash, in that gap, that's the self, that's Whitman's I, his defiance, his integration, his fragmentation, his resistance to possession, his obsession with collection - it's the godhead. It's the godhead.

Work Cited

Heartbreak Ridge. Dir. Clint Eastwood. Strong War drama. Marsha Mason, Clint Eastwood. Warner Bros., 1986.

Whitman, Walt., and Nina Baym, Gen. Ed. Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1979.

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

My discovery of Walt Whitman was unfortunate. Required to read Leaves of Grass I found myself struggling against his habit of speaking for other people. In a sense, he decided that his voice could and perhaps should be the voice heard, perhaps he didn't consider that this choice also meant that if others were silenced by the very forces he spoke against, he too was silencing those same voices through his choice to be the voice. For me, his statements about being the best poet ever, his choice to name himself in his poems all left me annoyed and thinking of him as relentlessly narcissistic.

As I said, to be thrown in at the deep end of his opus was probably unfortunate. Poets say that Whitman speaks for everyone, that his inclusive style is intended to habilitate the dispossessed. It's true that some of his work, his word play, is really astounding but he hasn't found his way into my heart and I suspect he won't. This summer I read some of his work again and to be fair I pierced my initial resistance by speaking it aloud. My housemates listened at a distance and enjoyed - and I did too but I still feel that too many people wish to speak for others, to silence in the act of voicing, offering rescue when rescue is a decree of incompetence. I will continue to encounter Whitman and see what develops.

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