The State of the Union
America’s poetic proponent was clearly in a surly mood when composing this prose piece. The man who looked at America and heard it singing was viewing the state of American life through eyes only and what eyes saw would not make a catchy song at all:
“society, in these States, is canker'd, crude, superstitious, and rotten.”
Misanthropy
The bleak outlook of Whitman continues growing darker and darker in an inexorable downward spiral straight into the recesses of outright misanthropic thought. The Whitman of verse seems almost unrecognizable from the author of the following prose:
“Like our huge earth itself, which, to ordinary scansion, is full of vulgar contradictions and offence, man, viewed in the lump, displeases, and is a constant puzzle and affront to the merely educated classes.”
Necessary Expressions of Democracy
Democratic vistas can only be expanded and engaged as part of the development of America through the power of literature. Thus, Whitman sends out a clarion call for literature to move away from that which is sophisticated but insane and where joy is synonymous with morbid fascination and embrace the natural world. A caveat in metaphorical form is deemed necessary, however:
“I do not mean the smooth walks, trimm'd hedges, poseys and nightingales of the English poets, but the whole orb, with its geologic history, the kosmos, carrying fire and snow, that rolls through the illimitable areas, light as a feather, though weighing billions of tons.”
Down with Capitalism!
In questioning the new hollowness at the core of American democracy, Whitman places some amount of blame upon the new capitalism taking over the land which would give rise to Mark Twain’s signature identification of the period as the Gilded Age. In a remarkably short amount of time, the primary purpose of business in the United States had shrunk down to just one goal: pecuniary gain. Whitman paints this new economy in starkly metaphorical terms:
“The magician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; and money-making is our magician's serpent, remaining today sole master of the field.”
Political Democracy: A Tough Workout
Whitman admits that political democracy in America is far from perfect, but even within its inherent flaws with the potential for evil consequences, its great positive aspect is its circumstance as a training ground for further and continuing improvement. Whitman reserves one of his most concrete metaphors to describe this state of being as a place where the point is in the trying, not the falling short, declaring of political economy that:
“It is life's gymnasium, not of good only, but of all.”
