Specimen Days Walt Whitman Analysis

Walt Whitman’s autobiography, Specimen Days, follows Whitman’s time as a male nurse in the Civil War. Divided into sections, Whitman discusses movements he made as a male nurse, from his first visits to camps, to visiting the White House and admiring the architecture. Specimen Days, who’s format is sections that act as mini-chapters, also utilizes a diary format; Whitman brings up specific days in his autobiography, ensuring audiences get to witness specific events that happened on those days he writes about. To audiences who were not involved in the war, Whitman’s autobiography was a way to witness the war, to get a handle on the conflict and understand what the soldiers were fighting for, but it also acted as a testimony to the audience who

Rather than writing in a detached manner about the happenings of the Civil War, Whitman writes about what is happening to the people in the Civil War. Whitman, for example, writes “Out doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, &c., a full load for a one-horse cart” (citation). This first person point of view shows audiences that Whitman witnessed this occurrence, not that it just was an occurrence. It creates an emphatic speaker, rather than a detached narrator. Whitman’s utilization of a first person point of view practically forces the audience to deglamorize the Civil War, making it so spectators are unable to romanticize an event that forced men to witness terrible sights just footsteps from the door. It places that door in front of them, makes it their front door. The audience, now, is witnessing the event, no longer a detached viewer, only a horrified spectator. Additionally, the usage of first person point of view evokes empathy because readers can now put themselves in Whitman’s shoes, watch what he watched. Therefore, audiences are able to empathize with Whitman, and, more importantly, everyone who saw

Whitman, here, is engaging his audience through the use of emotional pleas. He asks a rhetorical question, meaning he did not expect an answer from his audience but wanted them to think, to ponder. He chose words specifically to move audiences, from calling the men who got shot “helpless,” to choosing the word “corpses” to describe the bodies for a cold shock. Whitman employed the use of emotional pleas and emotional writing in order to immerse his audiences into his story. With Specimen Days, Whitman worked to prove the horrors of the Civil War, from injured men to apathetic soldiers. To do so, Whitman used his poetic writing style, deeply emotional narration, vivid imagery, and diary format to expose audiences to the horrors of the Civil War. Common poetic literary devices, pleas for emotions, strong imagery, and diary formatting all reached their hands out to the audience to try to help interest readers in how awful the Civil War truly was, making sure to prove that war, and the Civil War more specifically, should not be glamorized or