People often go through life not truly experiencing and enjoying it. This is evident in Walt Whitman’s poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” due to the narrator's enjoyment of his experience outside in nature, getting away from the tiring scientific explanation. Unlike others in the room, the narrator, Walt Whitman, is not impressed by what the educated astronomer says due to Whitman’s lack of interest and his inability to understand the scientific explanation of nature. Whitman also uses his own experiences of nature to influence his writing and the themes he conveys. Whitman’s theme is that people need to experience nature to understand it, instead of using science to interpret its intricacies. The lecture room, in which the story is set, acts as a barrier from nature, where the speaker ultimately …show more content…
The narrator is displayed to be Whitman attending the lecture of a highly educated astronomer to gain knowledge of nature but grows uninterested in the “proofs, the figures, [that] [were] ranged in columns before [him]” and rather longed for a more raw connection with nature (Whitman 2). When the poem starts, the speaker is in a lecture by an astronomer discussing nature with science and analytics. While others in the room are responsive to the astronomer, the speaker is not interested in what they say and feels like he is not gaining a true understanding of nature, causing him to not feel engaged. Due to this feeling, the speaker goes out into the night, feeling the air on his skin, and looking at the night sky gives him a true feeling of nature that he did have sitting in the lecture room. The speaker finds his true understanding of nature through a journey of self-reflection of his understanding and feelings. The poem creates feelings and a sense of being with the use of imagery, alliteration, and