ENG:  Topics on Douglass & Whitman    Spring '14

You know the drill!  Choose one of the following suggestions to develop in at least five paragraphs.  Cite passages and references from pertinent works; document carefully, using MLA format, as before.  Make sure that your essay-even if written as a letter-contains an introduction (stating thesis and purpose statement); a body, developing the essay's major points;. and a conclusion which comes full-circle to the introduction and provides closure for the thesis idea.  Be sure to proofread carefully and slowly!

as battle-scarred vets of ENG 231,

1)  Assume that you are Frederick Douglass, writing to a friend or associate (pick the friend or associate-do some research!) expressing in more informal terms a particular them from your Narrative in the Life....   Choose the focus of this letter from the following possibilities:

     a)  The dehumanization that Southern slavery creates for both slaves and masters; how the inhumanity of the "Peculiar Institution" brings out the worst in everyone concerned and leads to a corrupt moral standard.

     b)  The importance of literacy in moving from "slavery to freedom," using your own experience in learning to read and write. Tediously and illegally, as a slave in Maryland.  How is education paramount to quest for freedom and citizenship?

    c)  The importance of religion to the slave and the newly-emancipated black American:  What idea of God (or "Providence') motivates you?  What role did your religious faith play in sustaining you through the rigours of bondage and the movement to freedom?

If you are "creativity-challenged," feel free to develop any of the above to construct the usual five-ten paragraph critical analysis, portraying the development of the thesis in the conventional format.  

If you write the letter and quote yourself, Mr. Douglass, use quotation marks, but don't use page numbers; simply cite sources on the attached Works Cited.  (This is true, of course, if you use information from secondary sources as well!)

2)     Discuss Whitman's definition and presentation of death.  How does he regard the "final phenomenon" and express his understanding in his work?   How does death fit into his poetic philosophy?  Refer to at least two different poems, but focus on "Song of Myself," "Out of the Cradle..." and "The Wound Dresser."

3)  It is a commonplace observation that Whitman's Leaves of Grass embodies the ideal poetic principle Emerson describes in "Self-Reliance" and "The Poet."  Comparing the Emerson Ian abstractions to the Whit maniac specifics, establish this relationship:  How can Whitman, in fact, be considered the fulfillment of Emerson's "voice crying in the wilderness?"  Isolate three or four points that demonstrate this connection. 

4)   You are Mr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mr. John Greenleaf Whittier, Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, Mr. William Cullen Bryant, or even that silver-tongued Southern songster, Mr. Sidney Lanier (as in "Song of the Chattahoochee")...or a completely fictitious person of refined good taste and artistic discernment.  You are writing to the New York Times, Harper's, or the Atlantic Monthly (Emerson's rag), demanding that the publication immediately remove the advertisement promoting Leaves of Grass by a "Walt Whitman."  You object to the moronic and vulgar drivel this young working-class lout Whitman (if that is indeed his real name) calls "poetry."  As an informed, articulate spokesperson for the "Genteel Tradition" of the beautiful art, rebuke this hairy vulgarian for his upstart audacity-and, although it may soil your refined self to do so, cite passages from his objectionable and distasteful "poetry" to justify your assertion that this young ruffian should be muzzled and ignored before he encourages other hairy barbarians to desecrate the elegant purity of this once-noble art.  Let's say it's July 1856...The second edition of Leaves of Grass (including "SOM") has just been published, with Emerson's "endorsement" attached (forged, undoubtedly!).

Summers     ENG 231.01 / Project #5:  Topics on Douglass & Whitman  Spring '14   Page Two

5)     Analyze "Out of the Cradle..." as a classic "coming-of-age" piece:  How does the adult narrator remember his youthful epiphany during that summer on Long Island?  What does the narrator understand now about the "message" the universe contrived to communicate to him that fateful summer?  What does the symbolic "trinity" that Whitman creates-the sea, the moon, the bird-say to the boy?  How does their message inspire the boy to become the "cosmic interpreter" he will eventually be?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of

     all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of

     suns left.)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look

    through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books*

Under Your Boot-Soles I Remain,

Walt Whitman

("The People's Poet")