Whitman and the Casualties of the American Civil War
Whitman and the Casualties of the American Civil War
Write a 9 page paper in length on the following topic. Try to incorporate AT LEAST TWO secondary sources (e.g., useful claims from a critical essay, relevant biographical information, brief historical contextualization), and providing a short bibliography of works consulted, but your paper’s emphasis should remain on comparative close-reading and interpretation of primary texts.
You MUST include a works cited page at the end of the paper with ALL sources used throughout the paper. Include In-text citations throughout the paper when using direct quotes, paraphrasing, or any other sources needed for in-text citations and you MUST cite all in the works cited page as well. Incorporate all poems below that are asked to be read, in the essay either with direct quotes or paraphrasing and CITE in the works cited page. Have at least 4 sources used and if more are used be sure to cite them as well in works cited page.
***FOR THE ESSAY: *(BACKGROUND INFO)*: The American poet Walt Whitman served in the Union army as a nurse during the Civil War (1861–5), personally witnessing the carnage of that savage conflict, and like the rest of the citizens of the North, he endured the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in the war’s closing days. Whitman’s poems of the period reveal how difficult it must have been for a patriot and a lifelong advocate of peaceful coexistence to live through this fratricidal war, and to process the unprecedented grief and horror felt equally on personal and national levels.
**ESSAY PROMPT: For this topic, you MUST read the following war poems by Whitman and cite all these poems that you will be using in the essay on the Works Cited page: “Beat! Beat! Drums!” (1124), “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night” (1125), “O Captain! My Captain!” (an elegy for Lincoln, available on the attachment file I have provided for you◡̈see attachment), and “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim” (also available on the attachment file I have provided for you: see attachement). ***ANSWER ALL THE QUESTIONS ASKED BELOW IN THE ESSAY*** 1) Selecting THREE lyrics, discuss the poetic strategies Whitman employs in these distinct responses to (or in the case of “Drums,” forebodings of) the casualties of the Civil War. 2) How does Whitman adapt his poetry to personal or national mourning? 3) How does each poem’s occasion drive the poet’s choices of persona, tone, and/or form? 4) What metaphors or allusions does Whitman employ in each case, and why? 5) Are these elegies utterly distinct, or are they linked by a single response to the trauma of war?
Whitman and the Casualties of the American Civil War
