WAStudentCaroline

__My Student Work__

I did [|Alden's assignment]:


 * Using Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and the cultural object of “the president” within it (both explicitly identified, and implicitly inferred through deference to convention) take some time to write down, informally, some thoughts on how Whitman’s depiction and engagement with the notion of “the president,” “leadership,” and “institutions” address a very individualized sentiment.**

So I kind of approached this part as a free-write since it is supposed to be informal.

On one hand, I think the representation of the president as our leader supports an individualized sentiment because the position is one that is so prestigious, setting itself apart from the other members of society. Looking at “Song of Myself” I think Whitman draws attention to the president as the supreme individual on page 22 (sorry I don’t have the lines) for a couple of reasons. First, he is “surrounded by great secretaries,” suggesting that he stands apart from this crowd who also happen to be quite dignified as the word “great” connotes. Even among these “great secretaries,” the president triumphs. I also think the president as a symbol of institution addresses an individualized sentiment because he is juxtaposed with the pimply prostitute, one of the most destitute representations of any human being in the poem. However, and this is something that I will return to in the later part of the assignment, I think the juxtaposition undermines a possible binary relationship between the prostitute and the president rather than emphasizing it. On page 27, when the speaker says, “Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?” I think of the potential authority a person may exercise over others since the line seems to suggest that the president has surpassed all others, outstripping them. If I were to isolate these two lines from the rest of the poem, I can see a very individualized sentiment. The following line, however, undermines that assertion. The capital “p” in “President” also seems to support the power of the institution in which the “President” leads.


 * Does the sentiment of both, Whitman’s reaction to Franklin Pierce above, and his depiction of the figurative signifier of “the president” in LofG make concessions for the collective, or does it find its articulation ended in the absolutist approach of the self-aggrandized individual spirit above all else? How does Whitman’s engagement with “the president” translate to your own experience with institutional and governmental leadership in today’s society? What and where are the differences?**

Even though both Whitman’s writing about Pierce and his representation of the president draw attention to the individual, they clearly make concessions for the collective. Returning to my free-write, I think the following lines from page 22 support the notion of the collective:

The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck, The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other, (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you,) The President holds a cabinet council, he is surrounded by the great secretaries. ..

While the prostitute and the President represent two different classes, Whitman juxtaposes them to imply that even the most powerful leader and respected figure, the president, is not so uncommon from the prostitute because both still exist within the same collective group: humankind. Because these few lines stand alone, the juxtaposition seems to exaggerate the state of the prostitute and president, alienating them and making them seem more like individuals, but what precedes these two representations is a long list depicting other people, eventually culminating in the description of the lowly prostitute and the commander-in-chief. As a result of this list, the reader realizes that even these two extremes belong within the collective whole.

The speaker also acknowledges the strength of the aggregate by questioning the authority of the president. The following lines illustrate the potential power of the masses: “Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?/ It is a trifle. . . . they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on” (27). By asking these two rhetorical questions, the speaker suggests that the president, our leader, has surpassed the rest of society to reign as the ultimate authority figure. In the next line, however, the speaker predicts that “everyone” will surpass this power, undermining the power of the greatest individual: the president.

Whitman’s reaction to Pierce also makes concessions to the collective. While he isolates the president in his criticism of authority, Whitman prescribes a more collective approach, uniting the north and south, in order to solve the escalating conflict in the United States. As the leader of the United States, Pierce’s southern leanings coupled with his interest in Westward expansion only compounded the tension between northerners and southerners ([|http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/FranklinPierce/)], so Whitman is probably suggesting the unification between not only north and south but also elected leader and citizens.

Without going into too much detail, I would say that I have been able to relate to Whitman’s conception of the president, especially thinking back to last year when George W. Bush was still president. Enough said. I think one of the most interesting differences between Whitman’s time and now, though, is the way that the media is capable of covering every detail of the president’s life. We may feel more connected to the president because we can get to know the smaller, more intimate details about him, but the media’s careful attention to every single detail of his life also seems to isolate him in the same way that celebrities are often alienated.

__My Assignment Feedback__:

Hi Alden,

Your cultural object, documents relating to Franklin Pierce, helped me better understand //Leaves of Grass// by contextualizing it. Since I knew very little about Pierce going into the assignment, I thought of the president in terms of a very general authority figure, so the objects shed some much-needed light into the representation of the president. The blurbs about President Pierce let me better understand the tension between the individual and the collective since (sadly) my knowledge of American history is rather limited. I didn’t realize, for example, that Whitman disapproved of President Pierce so strongly.

Although I didn’t write about it in great detail, I think my favorite part of the assignment was comparing this representation of the president to my own. I like the way you make “the President” especially relevant to students by asking them to compare their own ideas of presidency (as well as authority and institution) to Whitman’s.

However, some other parts of your assignment were a little unclear. I didn’t know whether you were referring to “the President” in //Leaves of Grass// or President Pierce (or both) when you asked about “Whitman’s engagement with ‘the president.’” Because there wasn’t any length requirement, I didn’t know whether to write a full essay with thesis and body paragraphs or a more informal response, so I kept it fairly informal.

Your first question (“Does the sentiment of both, Whitman’s reaction to Franklin Pierce above, and his depiction of the figurative signifier of “the president” in LofG make concessions for the collective, or does it find its articulation ended in the absolutist approach of the self-aggrandized individual spirit above all else?”) doesn’t leave many other options for argument, so it limits what students can say about the topic. It would be difficult to argue that the notion of individualism is “ended in the absolutist approach of the self-aggrandized individual spirit above all else,” so students would probably go ahead and argue the former, regardless of what they might think. If you want students to focus on the collective more, perhaps you could ask them how Whitman concedes to the collective rather than whether he does or not.