Question

Analyze "l celebrate myself.. "is the first section of Whitman's poem "Song of Myself. In what ways does "I celebrate myself.. . serve as an appropriate introduction to the themes and poetic vision described in these excerpts?

Answer 1

"Song of Myself" is a poem included in Walt Whitman's work Leaves of Grass. One of its first titles, in 1856, was "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American". This title alludes to and anticipates the acclaimed poem's true meaning. When Whitman proposes to write a song of himself, he is not speaking of himself individually, but of a larger narrator, that is, a persona beyond one's traditional vision of "self". The passage "I am large, I contain multitudes" shows how he narrates for all, not limiting himself to his own story, and yet still speaks on an individual level, as if telling his story and everyone's story at the same time. The "I" in this poem is, just as the title indicates, an American or any American, with all the facets of their everyday life. In this way, the section "I celebrate myself" is an appropriate introduction because he does indeed celebrate, throughout the poem, this mutating narrator, that could be any common American, with their dreams, desires and general concept of self.