Everyone has a different meaning to liberty and what they think it means. Some thinks it means being free or having freedom. Others think it means fighting for your morals and beliefs. However the answer is simple, it means “The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behaviour, or political views.” So no matter what people’s definition of liberty are all of their answers are correct. Liberty can be found within us and only the bravest of souls search for it and act upon it as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson have done. They have written stories and poems and shared them with the world showing to everyone what their beliefs are by writing about them.
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were two of the most significant poets in the history of American literature. They changed the modern day course of literature. Liberty, for me the word means freedom, but what did it mean for these great writers. Whatever it meant for them shows in their work and how they perceive the world. As Walt wrote in Leaves of Grass, and how Emily wrote in her poems. As we delve into some works of some of the great minds in literature history we wonder what was their inspiration behind these stories and poems.
Well, for Walt Whitman I believe it meant speaking the truth no matter how terrible the truth might be to hear. He simply speaks for himself of his experiences and speaks for no one else. In Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself he speaks about life and the little things life can provide. As he speaks he provides details about his life such as the war. He speaks of the things he has seen during the war “A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay together,/ The maim’d and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw them there, /Some half-kill’d attempted to crawl away,/ These were despatch’d with bayonets or batter’d with the blunts of muskets,” (34 of Song of Myself) he shares his experiences and what he has learned with the world.
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“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,” I would like to believe that he thought that no matter how small or insignificant something might appear it is still an important part of something much larger. In his poem Beat! Beat! Drums! the drums represent the drums of war “Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!/ Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,/ Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,/ Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,/ Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,” Everyone is being drafted and brought into the war. They are walking for miles and when they need to rest the are housed in persons homes. He thought that his poems, sharing his experiences and the grotesquity of the war might help put an end to it. This however was not the case.
For Emily Dickinson however it means to never give up on your beliefs even if no one else supports them. In Emily Dickinson’s My Life had stood -a loaded gun I believe the meaning is that she loves a man who cannot love her back and because of this reason days seem to just drag on. She believes the only worse pain she could feel next to the pain she feels when she loses him is the cold embrace of death itself. As I believe is show in the excerpt from the story “Though I than He – may longer live/ He longer must – than I -/ For I have but the power to kill,/ Without – the power to die -.” Her poems seem to take a bit of a darker turn. Almost all of her poems seem to take a turn towards death. This is especially true in her poem I heard a Fly buzz – when I died, in which she references to her own death and talks about what it might be like and about her will. As she states in the excerpt “I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away/ What portion of me be/ Assignable – and then it was/ There interposed a Fly -.”
Both Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman have some things in common with their writing. As much as these two legendary writers have their differences in their writing they also have their similarities. They both speak wholey and simply the truth or what they perceive to be truth. They try to convey what they believe to be their truth and their messages through their literary work. When people do not approve of this however this does not discourage the writers, instead however it fuels them to try harder.
I admire that even though the world oppressed them they prevailed and triumphed and made the world hear what they wanted to say even though the world wanted them to be silent. Comparing these two great American writers in this essay I can safely assume that the both have a clear understanding of liberty and they are able to properly project their political views and morals on to others.
Works Cited
- Dickinson, Emily. “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun.”The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999). https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52737/my-life-had-stood-a-loaded-gun-764
- Dickinson, Emily. “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died.”The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999).
- Oxford University Press. “Liberty.” English Oxford Living Dictionaries, 2018, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/liberty
- Whitman, Walt. ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!.’ Leaves of Grass, edited by Joe Smith, 29 Nov 2018, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45469/beat-beat-drums
- Whitman, Walt. ‘Song of Myself.’ Leaves of Grass, edited by Joe Smith, 29 Nov 2018, pp. 31-34. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version
