Emerson V. Whitman What Characteristics Term Paper

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Like Emerson, Whitman found beauty symbols of American future progress, even in industrial America and standardized and homogenized modern progress like the "Locomotive in Winter": "For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee," cries Whitman, celebrating the terrible, beautiful, awesome power of the moving train cars. Whitman finds inspiration in the man-made device, as well as terror. He optimistic, like Emerson, in this poem about the possibility of progress to create something exciting, but Whitman is more tolerant of ambivalence. Emerson says he is willing to contradict himself, but Whitman actually does in spirit, loving the terror of the locomotive, even while he is wary of it, and what it represents.

As a poet, Whitman was always aware that paradox is part of human life. Not even nature was perfect. Nature could be terrible, wild, and wonderful, unlike the natural and quieter pastoral celebrated in Emerson's writings.

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Human beings, like natural beings, could be sexual and vital as eagles: "The rushing amorous contact high in space together, / the clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel," Whitman marvels how love and hate can be embodied in the persona of the eagle, but in his poem "The Dalliance of Eagles," although nature is inspiring, it is not inviting. The poet may see his own animal nature reflected in the behavior of the eagles, as he does in the locomotive, the stars, and the American Man, but unlike Emerson, Whitman is more willing to embrace the darkness of human nature, as well as the light, and the fact that human beings and natural beings need to be part of something, whether it is America or just in the company of another of the same species, like the eagles.

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