Whitman out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Whitman's Poem "Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking," is not, at first glance, an obvious love poem. Most readers would probably consider this a tragic poem about death and love lost. In spite of the fact that the poem is about intrinsically sorrowful events, or perhaps because of it, Whitman is able to capture a very unique and poignant portrayal of love. There are three major perspectives to examine how Whitman develops the theme of love in Out of the Cradle, and by examining each reoccurring theme in the poem separately, we can come to a more complete understanding of how they work together to communicate Whitman's message about love.

Perhaps the most complicated symbol within the poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" is that of the moon. Each time the moon appears, it appears in a way that is a striking reflection of the love of the bird.The most obvious object Whitman uses to communicate about love is the birds, the "feathered guests from Alabama". While the bird symbols in Lilacs and Cradle may seem very similar, the bird in Lilacs is a symbol of a transcendentalist view of death in the scheme of nature, and the bird in Cradle is a symbol of a much different view of death--the personal, acute pain of a lover left to mourn. Although the birds love is significant, the boy is also an important theme and the relationship between the two may be key to understanding Whitman's intention. Another object of love is the boy in the poem, which the author's voice allows us to assume is Whitman himself.Another major factor affecting the communication of Whitman's ideas on death is the diction and tone of each poem. In Cradle, death is personal, grieving is acutely painful, and death is presented as an inevitable force oppressing the speaker and the reader. However, in Lilacs, Whitman presents death as impersonal, like a star falling or being hidden by black murk .

By examining the poetic devices and how Whitman uses them to heighten the sense of death and different facets of grief it becomes obvious that while both poems intimately explore death, grief, and morbidity, When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd presents a more generalized, transcendental, mournful representation of grief, the poem Out of the Cradle Endlessly rocking confronts the reader with the stark pain and reality of death

This is another poem that links Whitman to the Romantics. The "birth of the poet" genre was of particular importance to Wordsworth, whose massive Prelude details his artistic coming-of-age in detail. Like Wordsworth, Whitman claims to take his inspiration from nature. Where Wordsworth is inspired by a wordless feeling of awe, though, Whitman finds an opportunity to anthropomorphize, and nature gives him very specific answers to his questions about overarching concepts. Nature is a tabula rasa onto which the poet can project himself. He conquers it, inscribes it. While it may become a part of him that is always present, the fact that it does so seems to be by his permission.

The epiphany surrounding the word "death" seems appropriate, for in other poems of Whitman's we have seen death described as the ultimate tool for democracy and sympathy. Here death is shown to be the one lesson a child must learn, whether from nature or from an elder. Only the realization of death can lead to emotional and artistic maturity. Death, for one as interested as Whitman in the place of the individual in the universe, is a means for achieving perspective: while your thoughts may seem profound and unique in the moment, you are a mere speck in existence. Thus the contemplation of death allows for one to move beyond oneself, to consider the whole. Perhaps this is why the old crone disrupts the end of the poem: she symbolizes an alternative possibility, the means by which someone else may have come to the same realization as Whitman. In the end the bird, although functionally important in Whitman's development, is insignificant in the face of the abstract sea: death, which is the concept he introduces, remains as the important factor.

Thus although "Out of the Cradle" can be described as a poem about the birth of the poet, it can also be read as a poem about the death of the self. In the end, on the larger scale, these two phenomena are one and the same.

Whitman seems to express no divide between one or anothers experience. He conveys how his experience is formulated from "the memories of the bird" and "your memories sad brother". The poet takes these experiences and expresses them in his own way..What is the bird's message, and what are the limits to his message that the boy must seek elsewhere to find?The bird tells the boy that love makes life complete. The sea tells that death is always present and that at any moment it can take away out love. The bird's message is limited or incomplete because he fails to tell the boy that love and despair or rather love and grief go together..Love might make life complete but I think at the same time that the poem is saying that you can survive without love. You may grieve but you can survive. The bird

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