I Hear America Sing
Sponsored Listings from TermPapersMonthly.com
Submitted by crimsonaerial on 03/05/2010 09:27 AM Flag This Paper
Join Now- Category:
- English
- Words | Pages:
- 311 | 2
- Views:
- 296
-
I Hear America Sing
“I Hear America Singâ€
“I Hear America Sing,†by Walt Whitman, is a poem that symbolizes American nationalism. It seems to me that Whitman is using singing as a symbol of the sounds that working creates, turning the sounds of industry into music. But at the same time he is portraying a happy world. This poem is clearly about achieving the American dream. Everyone is working from nothing to become something. They are singing in unison. They are all happy about playing their part to build up America. “I Hear America Sing,†makes an image of America the America would like to be true. The main issue I have with the poem is within the two sentences: "The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat - the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck. (5-6)" Life was not so optimistic being a worker in America. Sure it is nice now after the workers got a lot more rights, but this was written while Capitalism was in its prime. Being a worker was not that nice, the life of a worker was not far from what we would regard as hell. Basically in America if you were born poor, the chances for you to become rich were extremely low. Even though a chance is better than no chance, the overly positive poem clearly showcases the ambivalence of the time. People did not just want to think they were in a time where everyone was important, they wanted to believe it. In “I Hear America Sing,†America’s workers from slaves to boatmen, sing to represent pride in their hard work. Each worker always has a different song to sing, since every man is different. But in Whitman’s terms every song comes together as one in harmony to represent the success of America.