A Comparison of Walt Whitman and William Faulkner Essay Example

evident in his best-known work, Leaves of Grass, which endeavored to praise the senses and to glorify the human body. Whitman’s alluring personality enchanted many readers, but others found the poems in Leaves of Grass to be in poor taste. Whitman spoke freely through unrhymed verse, unafraid of resisting conformity.

Whitman describes his own writing best in the poem “Song of Myself” (89): My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, with the twirl of my tongue I encompass words and volumes of worlds.

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then? Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation, Do you know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded? Waiting in gloom, protected by frost, The dirt receding before my prophetical screams, I underlying causes to balance them at last. The connection Whitman had with the readers enabled them to feel as if they were a part of the writing.

Noticeably absent from the multitude of writing techniques Whitman used to connect with the reader was the use of slang, a result of New York’s societal influences. Whitman considered slang the lowest form of writing, declaring in Prose Works that slang is “the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize” (Whitman Prose Works).

Whitman writings veered from what he considered filth.

While he publicly criticized commercial pornography as being degrading

to women, some of his earliest critics viewed Whitman’s poetry as filth in its purest form: pornography. Several of Whitman’s poems, such as “I Sing the Body Electric” contained strong sexual innuendos. Whitman wrote, “the armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, they will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, and discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul” (Whitman The Complete Poems 127). The sensual language in Whitman’s writing was remarkably contemporary for his time.

In 1882, American censorship nearly prosecuted Whitman on the grounds of publishing obscenities.

Whitman detested commercial pornography as well as the use of slang, so it is ironic since he was so openly graphic in his poetry (Folsom). William Faulkner did not possess the same abhorrence for slang that Whitman had. Faulkner grew up in Mississippi, and like Whitman, his surroundings strongly influenced him. This is evident through the use of southern characters in his stories. Faulkner’s great grandfather was a colonel in the Confederate Army, established a railroad and even published his own novels.

His great grandfather was even featured as a character in several of Faulkner’s works (Horst).

Faulkner’s view of racial integration and his sense of humor were typical of southerners in his time. Faulkner also chose to portray remarkably intelligent individuals who lived as simpletons, clearly indicative of his admiration for the southern lifestyle. Faulkner perceived himself as a simpleton as well, once admitting that “I'm just a farmer who likes to tell stories” (Burt). In the book, Big Woods, Faulkner created an entire world based on his own personal experiences.