I Hear America Singing

“I Hear America Singing”

“I Hear America Singing” – Walt Whitman (Poet’s Life)

First published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, “IHearAmericaSinging” exemplifies Whitman’s intense patriotism and his staunch belief in the importance of the “common man and woman” in American society. In the opening line, “IhearAmericasinging, the varied carols Ihear …” the speaker assumes a posture common in much of Whitman’s poetry by asserting his unique ability to see America in all its greatness, or in this particular case, to hear “its varied carols.” What follows is a chronicle of various characters or figures from the working-class, each singing his or her own song. These lines may be read literally to suggest the speaker of the poem actually hears these various people singing, but references to “song” or “carols” in the poem also serve as metaphors for the various characters’ uniqueness.

Each character is “singing what belongs to him or her and to none else …” and together their individual “carols” blend into one enormous chorus that is America. In this manner the poem alludes to the democratic ideal of a government “of the people, for the people and by the people,” each person with a voice—a say in how the government is run. However, by omitting members of the upper-class from the poem, the speaker denies them a place in his particular vision of America. Thus the poem espouses an America in which working people are revered above all others, and by positioning himself within the poem, the speaker asserts his own rightful place in this America. The becomes the speaker’s song, his contribution to the overall chorus.

Author Biography

The second of nine children, Whitman was born in 1819 on Long Island, New York, to Quaker parents. In 1823 the Whitmans moved to Brooklyn, where Whitman attended public school. At age eleven he left school to work as an office boy in a law firm and then as a typesetter’s apprentice at a number of print shops. Although his family moved back to Long Island in 1834, Whitman stayed in Brooklyn and then New York City to become a compositor. Unable to find work, he rejoined his family on Long Island in 1836 and taught at several schools. In addition to teaching, Whitman started his own newspaper, the Long Islander. He subsequently edited numerous papers for short periods over the next fourteen years, including the New YorkAurora and the BrooklynEagle, and published poems and short stories in various periodicals.

Whitman did little in terms of employment from the 1850 to 1855. Instead, he focused on his own work, writing and printing the first edition of his collection of poems Leaves of Grass. Over the next few years, Whitman continued to write and briefly returned to journalism. During the American Civil War he tended wounded soldiers in army hospitals in Washington, D.C., while working as a copyist in the army paymaster’s office. Following the war Whitman worked for the Department of the Interior and then as a clerk at the Justice Department. He remained in this position until he suffered a paralytic stroke in 1873. Although he lived nearly twenty more years and published four more editions of Leaves of Grass, Whitman produced little significant new work following his stroke. He died in Camden, New Jersey, at age 72.

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition): "I Hear America Singing." Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski and Mary Ruby. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 151-165. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 6 Feb. 2014.

“I Hear America Singing” – Walt Whitman (Historical Events)

Historical Context

It is a measure of Walt Whitman’s love for his country and his faith in the nation’s citizenry that he produced this poem in 1860, just as America was starting, after decades of tension, to rip apart into the two sides that would fight each other in the Civil War. The 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln set off a series of states resigning their membership in the United States, or “seceding.” Lincoln had run on a platform of moderation regarding slavery: he accepted its existence in states where it was already established, but he opposed it personally and did not want to see the practice extended in the future. Feeling threatened by the new President-elect’s views, South Carolina voted to secede from the Union on December 20, 1860; during the following January, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana also seceded. On February 4, 1861, the six states banded together as the Confederate States of America. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy would accept the other as a legitimate power, and, as was inevitable, the mounting hostility broke out into armed conflict on April 12, at FortSumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Lincoln responded by drafting 75,000 citizens to fight in the Union Army. By the time of the first major battle of the war, the Battle of Bull Run on July 1, 1861, all of the southern slave states were members of the Confederacy.

No single preventable action caused the country to tear in half like this. In a way, it was programmed to happen from the very birth of the nation, when the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed that “all men are created equal,” was signed by men who participated in and supported the institution of slavery. At first, the United States government simply proceeded as if this were simply another issue that had two sides, but the supporters of each side felt so strongly about their beliefsthat they could not give anything up nor accept any gains by their opponents. As early as 1803, Congress was forced to deal with the fate of the growing country, when the Louisiana Purchase greatly expanded America’s land territory in the west. Debate raged over whether or not slavery should be allowed to expand into the new territory.

In 1818, when the MissouriTerritory wanted to become a state, the issue reached a point of crisis. At that time, there were eleven states that permitted slavery and eleven free states, and neither side wanted the other to achieve a majority in the Senate. The agreement that was reached in March of 1820, called the Missouri Compromise, was supposed to settle the issue: Missouri was admitted as a slave state, Maine was admitted as a free state, and the deal stipulated that with future additions to the country, slavery would only be permitted in states that fell south of Missouri’s southern border. This compromise may have kept politicians on both sides happy, but throughout the country, the issue became increasingly volatile. In 1850, the same man who had authored the Missouri Compromise, Congressman Henry Clay, devised a series of five acts that were meant to retain the balance of power and calm the more dangerous elements of both sides. Two of the Compromise Measures of 1850 were seen as losses for the supporters of slavery: California was admitted as a free state and slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia. The third act established the territories of New Mexico and Utah, where the slavery issue would be settled by popular vote, and the fourth allotted millions of dollars to pro-slavery Texas for border disputes. The fifth, the Fugitive Slave Act, angered opponents of slavery to an unexpected degree: it made it a federal crime to aid escaping slaves and paid government money to bounty hunters to capture black persons, determine if they were escaped slaves, and return them to their owners. Since these hunters were paid twice as much for each returned slave as they were paid for each person they declared a free citizen, they often enslaved innocent, unsuspecting parties. The outrage felt across the free states in response to this act helped the Abolitionist Movement gather supporters for the cause of eradicating slavery. By 1853, Clay’s Compromise had proven itself to be no solution to the dispute. Senator Steven Douglas of Illinois—the man who is best remembered today for being Lincoln’s debate opponent—proposed yet another compromise scheme, the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which ended the federal government’s attempts to balance slave states with free states by letting new states vote on whether to allow slavery. The Act raised the fighting over the slavery issue to an unheard-of degree of destructiveness. Abolitionists and slave holders poured money and guns into the Kansas territory, leading to violent attacks and retribution as both sides tried to influence the vote through bribery and intimidation.

Given that the country had been divided from the start over the issue of slavery and that the fighting over this issue had become increasingly bitter for almost a century—to the point that it was about to cause the country to disband into separate halves—, it is difficult to imagine how Whitman could have written a poem in 1860 praising the American spirit: in fact, it is difficult to see how he could even see something that could be considered “American” at that time of division. In the years since the poem was written, though, it has touched something basic in all Americans and helped the country unite with a common identity.

“I Hear America Singing” – Walt Whitman (Criticism)

Poem Summary

Line 1

In the first line of the poem, the speaker establishes his position as an observer and listener. The repetition of “I hear” serves to assert the significance of the speaker’s role in the poem. All that follows is filtered through the speaker and is part and parcel of his experience. Thus the poem depends on the speaker, on this individual consciousness, for its meaning. At the same time, the first line introduces the poem’s controlling metaphor: “IhearAmericasinging.” The speaker envisions America as the culmination of the voices of the American people who are unique individuals.

Lines 2-7

The speaker then begins to chronicle various figures or characters familiar to American society at the time. While each is defined by his occupation, he or she is also singing and expressing his or her own uniqueness. Each figure is of the working class and is depicted going about the day’s work. These characters, according to the controlling metaphor, are presented as being “America.” Considering the figures from other socioeconomic classes that the poem omits, it becomes apparent that the speaker is presenting a particular vision of America. Though the poem puts forth the ideal of government as by and for the people, the examples of American people limited to those from the working class. In a sense, the speaker denies figures from other classes a place in the poem, and thus in America. By giving himself a place in the poem, the speaker does, however, assert his own position in this vision of America. Thus the poem becomes his song, his work, his individual contribution to the larger chorus that is America.

Line 8

Line 8 is particularly interesting considering the historical context in which the poem was written. By including the figures of the mother, young wife, and sewing girl, Whitman gives women their due place in the working class and acknowledges their contribution to American society and culture at a time when women still did not have the right to vote—when they literally had no voice in government. The poem thus anticipates a vision of America much more proximate to the one commonly held in modern times, in which women are seen and appreciated for their vital contributions both in and outside the home and in which parenting is regarded as an indispensable occupation.

Line 9

The speaker reinforces in Line 9 the metaphor of “singing” to mean individualism. The idea that each character is unique and has his or her own song, that each by virtue of his or her profession is essential to the whole of American society and culture, is expressly democratic in nature. In this way the poem celebrates American individualism.

Lines 10-11

Up until this point, each figure has been described as engaged in various forms of work or has been presented in relation to his or her respective vocation. The speaker broadens his scope at the end of the poem beyond this work identity, extending the poem’s definition of self and individuality. When the day’s work is done, “the party of fellows,” presumably not including the women figures of the poem, continues to sing. The individuals presented in the poem, while previously defined solely according to their work, are now seen as more well-rounded human beings who exist outside their work as well. Equally important, the chorus of voices that is America is described as “robust, friendly,” and the resulting song is “strong” and “melodious.” This choice of adjectives suggests Whitman’s particular vision of America as a powerful country of “fellows” where goodwill abounds. Most important, Whitman sees an America in which every citizen contributes to the welfare of the whole, and in which all working people are revered.

Themes

Individualism

When Walt Whitman expresses his awe at these Americans singing, he is making a statement about human greatness by telling the reader that human achievement is not measured by what one does, but instead by how one goes about doing it. He inspires admiration for these people, not by stating outright that he thinks they do great things, but by giving brief, specific images of each one tending to his or her own business and combining their individual jobs with “singing,” which we usually associate with cheerfulness and lightness of spirit. In only one case does the poem direct the reader’s thought by using a specific, judgmental adjective (the positive word “delicious”), but we can assume that this anomaly says more about Whitman’s lack of knowledge concerning domestic life than any change of strategy. This assumption is supported by his vague mention of the young wife “at work,” indicating that he just could not come up with any specific details about what women do, in the way he provided information about such jobs of the carpenter, mason, and boatman. This poem uses opposites to show how wide the range of Americans and their work environments are: male and female, ashore and on water, preparing or finishing work in the morning, afternoon, or evening.

According to the poem, the independence that all of these different types display in their work is left aside at the end of the day, when they come together as a “party of young fellows” (reflecting the social practices of the day, the females in this poem do not socialize with the males). Here, the corporate mentality that dominates the late-twentieth century is shown to us in its mirror image: While today we think of people working together all day to enjoy “free time” to pursue individual interests at the day’s end, Whitman shows individuals who choose to spend their leisure time by uniting with other people. Perhaps the American way of life has changed this much since the poem was written. Then again, it is possible that the shift in the workplace, from manual labor to manipulating information, has made American jobs less individualistic, or that the rise of self-sufficient leisure activities, such as television and computer games, has given contemporary Americans less incentive to gather with others when the day is through. It could be, though, that the workers in Whitman’s poem reflect an ideal that was just as unreal then as today, while being just as admired today as then. His workers are responsible and proud of their accomplishments and are also friendly and sociable. It is not easy to tell whether these admired traits were more common then, or if Whitman just brought his vision to life in a particularly effective way.