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Walt WhitmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Christianity posits that the physical world is a manifestation of the Creator’s power and glory. Whitman, using the urgent (and heretical) theology he read in Emerson’s essays and poetry, seeks to upcycle this Christian notion of oneness with a secular faith in the oneness of the organic world itself. There is nothing in the material universe that does not participate in that grand harmony. The concept of isolation is therefore moot, and the fear of mortality is ironic. Every element of the natural world is part of this energy field. The loss of any individual part, from a grasshopper to a seagull, from a human being to a star, is inconceivably irrelevant. The energy field is sustained despite—not because of—any individual.
For the individual, however, essential oneness without God demands an even greater leap of faith than Judeo-Christianity demanded. The poem here relaxes the grandness of Whitman’s theology by using the image of a spider spinning its web. Whitman draws on the parable teachings of Christ himself, who often used readily available and very domestic images to teach his philosophy: a vine, a lamb, seeds at planting time. However, such a perception is an illusion caused by the anxiety of vulnerability, in a universe in which the comforting notion of a Creator-God had, in just a few decades of scientific breakthroughs and bold philosophical treatises, become suddenly irrelevant for many.
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
America
America
Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Walt Whitman
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Walt Whitman
For You O Democracy
For You O Democracy
Walt Whitman
Hours Continuing Long
Hours Continuing Long
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sit and Look Out
I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman