Its Simply A Bunch Of Grass, It Signifies Nothing

As I continue reading Walt Whitman’s poems in Leaves of Grass, I start noticing something about the structure of his lines. After some reading, I wanted to take a break and started scrolling down pretty fast to see if anything caught my attention. I started to see how Whitman always started his sentences with the same word. Not that all the lines in his poems start with the same letter, but out of nowhere he goes 10 straight lines starting with I and then with The or Do, If, A and others like this. For example on poem 15, which is one of the longest ones, he starts with The almost the whole poem. This is another thing about his style that I noticed and wanted to write down.

There was one particular poem that really caught my attention because of what it said and because of its length. It is poem 17 which goes like this:

These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands—they are not original with me;
If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing;
If they are not the riddle, and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing;
If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is, and the water is;
This is the common air that bathes the globe.

This poem said a lot of things to me. Walt Whitman had a very original, defined style, in fact we were talking about clichés in class and I couldn’t fins almost any in his work. Starting with his title, Leaves of Grass, he gives it a very original style, I mean, who would dare to call them Leaves and not blades as the rest of the people do. What Whitman says in this poem is that people are not original, and that they actually nothing. This remembered me of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and how in Act 5 Scene 5 he says the famous phrase, “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (Line30) it is the same as Whitman says, that those not original, are nothing, if you are not the one creating a riddle but trying to solve it, you are nothing. Then he talks about the grass, and this is a metaphor about the people, and how they all grow together the same, and that is why only few can be different from the rest.

Blades of Grass

As I read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, I start noticing how he has a defined style of his own. Starting with the title, I know that Whitman is a very original writer, and there are no clichés in his writing. You don’t say Leaves of Grass, you probably refer to it as blades of grass and leaves of a tree. But saying it this way takes away the clichés and adds the originality. As I read I notice that something with the structure probably is telling me something, but reading it through the computer I can’t find it. I noticed how the lines were all different lengths but couldn’t figure out why it was this way. During class, my teacher explained what it was, if you look at the book sideways, it looks like blades of grass! I couldn’t believe it, it was so obvious yet I wasn’t able to recognize it. I remembered Flaubert’s style, and how his structure showed us what was happening. Another stylistic effect I found, or at least I think I did, was again with the title, Leaves of Grass. The letter S, gives it some representation. This letter with its curves feels like a path, a prairie and perhaps mountains, all of these are covered in grass. There is an alliteration in the letter S, by repeating the consonant S and therefore adding the style to the title and the whole book of poems.

The Stylistic Effect

Flaubert definitely plays a lot with the placing of punctuation points. This stylistic change makes a great difference in the way we read and understand his book A Simple Soul. He uses sentences with up to seven commas, “When Virginia’s turn came, Felicite leaned forward to watch her, and through that imagination which springs from true affection, she at once became the child, whose face and dress became hers, whose heart beat in her bosom, and when Virginia opened her mouth and closed her lids, she did likewise and came very near fainting.”(A Simple Soul) this sentence feels like a race to the goal line. I when I actually saw this today in class, I was amazed and really started noticing Flaubert’s style which is the whole point of his book.

Another interesting part I found was, “Felicite evoked Paradise, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the blazing cities, the dying nations, the shattered idols; and out of this she developed a great respect for the Almighty and a great fear of His wrath. Then, when she had listened to the Passion, she wept. Why had they crucified Him who loved little children, nourished the people, made the blind see, and who, out of humility, had wished to be born among the poor, in a stable?” (A Simple Soul) This book is definitely not a satire but it does contain elements like for example irony. The quotation above is a lot of irony. It also includes some stylistic effect as she cites the capitalized events and the non capitalized by threes.