Walt Whitman and Mark Twain prominently feature vivid images of America and the natural world in Song of Myself and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, focusing respectively on grass and the Mississippi River as the predominant symbols of each work. Whitman’s recurring and versatile descriptions of grass enhance his argument that all Americans and humans are equal, and Twain’s striking depiction of the Mississippi as the ultimate driving force in Huck and Jim’s journey characterizes the river as the overarching instrument of the characters’ destinies. Both Walt Whitman and Mark Twain employ symbols of nature to represent their own attitudes toward American identity as well as to illustrate the growing ideologies of liberty and individualism in Nineteenth-Century America. In Song of Myself, grass serves as Whitman’s primary symbol for equality, unity, and democracy. In Section Six of the poem, Whitman catalogues a variety …show more content…
Huck is content to live an idle and carefree life and let the river take charge of where the raft goes, so he and Jim simply “let [the raft] alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to” (Twain 158). Throughout the novel, nature’s omnipresent power over the man-made world is demonstrated in the events that transpire as a result of the river’s might. It is the Mississippi, for example, that causes the raft to float past Cairo, resulting in Huck and Jim’s subsequent encounters with the Duke, the King, and Tom Sawyer. Although Twain did not emphasize religious themes in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Mississippi River represents a power greater than Huck and Jim; it is the overarching force that directs the principal outcomes of the