Final Blog post: Still trying to figure out my life

Mrs. Genesky I didn't want to post my reflection for all to see because it is really personal so I am bringing it to you by hand. I hope that's ok and you won't take off points.

Heather

Witty Whitman

Just from looking at the cover of this journal we can see that this was probably Whitman's prized possession. It is all beat up and warn down, meaning it's definitely been used a lot and been exposed to the weather. The caption says that he carried this around with him everywhere he went. When looking at the inside of his journal, we can see that he writes in fast, sloppy cursive. I seems like he was in a rush every time he wrote something, meaning he probably didn't have much time to write during his busy days. It also might mean that he had so many ideas flowing through his head that he needed to rush to get them all down on paper. In many of his entries I noticed that he is having a conversation with someone. One big example is Abraham Lincoln, who inspired many of his Civil War poems. We can see he is against slaves just like Lincoln and this opinion is prevalent in his discussion of Lincoln. In this journal Whitman admits many deep inner thoughts that are very truthful and personal. The pictures he drew are very childlike and simple sketches, but these also probably helped him in relating his poems to certain people.

We can tell through his journal that he cares a lot about people and living his life. Many of his poems were inspired by real life events that took place in his life and documented in this journal. In the first page of his journal the notes tell us that he wrote down many addresses and names of certain people. These must be people who inspired some of his poems. He loved Lincoln so much that he observed his emotions from watching him on the street. He starting writing poems about Lincoln's sad emotions and on some pages of his journal he writes an imaginary conversation with him. This reveals that Lincoln is Whitman's hero, almost and is inspired by Lincoln's beliefs to write poems with themes of freedom, unity and brotherhood.He talks a lot about religion and his stance on it, saying their are 3 religions. He then goes on to discuss how freedom should not only be within the United States, but should be happening around the world and in his inner thoughts he greatly discusses this, which transfers into many of his poems.