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Walt Whitman's I Sing The Body Electric

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Walt Whitman was a forward thinker of his time. His poems carry out messages that are much deeper than their lines of writing. In his poem, “I Sing the Body Electric”, he writes about the movement and energy of the body and how it relates to the soul. His poem is enriched with beautifully written lines relaying what the soul truly is, the connections through the body, and what can be learned from being attentive to the embodiment of others. Whitman ends his poem with the lines, “O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, O I say now these are the soul!”. By this, he means that bodies are not who a person is. Bodies merely are the outward appearance of a deeper being. Whitman shows readers that the soul of the body is what makes the body beautiful, and that a body is beautiful because it is the casing of the soul. This message can also be seen in the lines, “You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul”. …show more content…

He conveys this with his line “As I see my soul in Nature, As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness, sanity, beauty,”. Souls are spirits. With the poem focusing on the energy and spirit of the body, it is also alluding to the soul. I have connected with others on a much deeper level. In particular, I have not only connected, but have fell in love with another soul. After connecting, he held an inborn fondness within me that could not be

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