7. O Me! O Life! Flashcards
Context
“O Me! O Life!” first appeared in the 1867 edition of Walt Whitman’s magnum opus, Leaves of Grass.
The American Civil War had ended only two years before (1867). While Whitman didn’t fight in that war himself—one of his friends once said that imagining the pacifistic Whitman on a battlefield was as incongruous as imagining Jesus Christ holding a gun—he saw plenty of its horrors when he volunteered in military hospitals.
A firm opponent of slavery, Whitman felt great hope and relief when the Union won the war. But that relief was short-lived: he was devastated when, shortly after the end of the war, Lincoln was assassinated. Whitman had deeply admired and sympathized with Lincoln.
But Whitman’s grief became his muse. Whitman’s sorrow over Lincoln’s death and the Civil War in general inspired poems like “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” and pushed Whitman into deeper spiritual waters.
His conclusion in “O Me! O Life!”—that existence is inherently miraculous—is all part of the transcendent understanding of life that he developed in the wake of terrible times.
Theme: the meaning of Life
the plain fact that there’s something rather than nothing is enough of a “light” of hope and wonder to making living worthwhile. In this speaker’s view, pausing to consider how unlikely and miraculous it is that one exists at all can give one enough energy to keep on living in a world of pains and disappointments—and even to feel pretty good about it.
this fakeass answer
Apostrophe
The use of O is quite an old fashioned lament. This makes WW’s dramatic outburst feel more loaded.
This O is used to apostrophise himself and life, the same word used to adress divine beings. dramatising and glorifying seemingly trivial things in comparison; drumming the mundane and everyday into an epic.
Allusion
” That you are here” parallels to what God says to Moses in the Biblical book of Exodus; when Moses asks God’s name and God replies, “I am what I am”. .. life is a self justifying miracle.
Symbols: Cities
Cities, in this poem, symbolize civilization itself.
Scrutinises the history of humanity.
End Stopped Lines
Every single line in this poem is end-stopped: that is, each line is a complete and self-contained thought. But each of these lines is also a continuation of a single ongoing idea, and many even look the same, using parallelism to echo each other’s language.
This contrast between separation and continuity helps to evoke the speaker’s anguish: all the separate problems these lines list are also part of the great big intractable problem of human suffering.
David S. Reynolds
The poem “poses the question of the meaning of life as something that is universally confusing & elusive; & in the final metaphor, Whitman offers a democratic explanation rather than a solution, allowing the mystifying meaning of life to be equally as perplexing to people from all walks of life.”
Charles M. Oliver
“The poet suggests that even with occasional moments of self-pity or depression, life is worth living.”
Structure
The poem is broken into two parts: the speaker’s initial seven-line cry of anguish, and a mysterious voice’s two-line “Answer.”
After all the speaker’s “recurring” and agonized questions about why people are so stupid and life is so disappointing, the other voice’s reply feels awfully brief. And that’s exactly the point. The “Answer”—that the mere existence of life is a matter for deep wonder—is at once profound and as simple as can be.
the poem is powerfully rhythmic, using bold stresses to evoke the depth of the speaker’s torment. Take the opening spondees (feet consisting of two stressed beats in a row) of “O me! O life!”
Driving stresses like these evoke the urgency and pain of the speaker’s questions about life all through the poem: the lines seem to pound like a troubled heart.
The lack of steady, plodding rhyme keeps things feeling urgent and intimate, like a call directly from the speaker’s heart.
