The Ideas In Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself

As John Muir wrote, “when one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” The idea John Muir had about nature closely ties to the theme of Walt Whitman’s poems. In section 42 of the poem, “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman uses language to convey the idea that everything is connected to him. Whitman first writes how people are connected to him, then how everyone has similar experiences as one another, and finally, Whitman structures his poems in a particular fashion to connect everything together.
Section 42 of “Song of Myself” expresses many ideas that Walt Whitman would like his audience to think deeper about. One of these ideas pertains to the connections people share, physically and mentally. Whitman believes that “This is the city and I am one of the citizens,/ Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars,/ markets, newspapers, schools,/ The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories,/ stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate” (42). Because Whitman is a citizen in New York, he believes that everyone shares common “interests”. Any news that happens in the city catches everyone's attention because changes in the city could affect
In section 42, Whitman uses language choice to extend this idea to people and identify how people may be in a web of life, with one part connecting to everything else. Whitman shows his reader that people are connected to each other depending on where they live and what they have to go through as a group. He then dived deeper and explained that people are not only connected through outside forces, but inside thoughts and personal actions as well. To further solidify Whitman using language to address the connection between people, he uses repetition throughout the section. No matter what Whitman writes about, he always leaves his audience asking important questions about their