Answer to Question #104313 in English for Raheem

Question

In Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, Identify two or three key literary devices the poet is using to help create meaning and provide textual support of each. Then explain:

Answer 1

One of literally devices used in the poem is a metaphor.Whitman uses this idea of a journey aptly since the poem took more than 30 years to metamorphose into its final form.The speaker(the "I") who is Whitman shares his soul journey to the ocean with the battlefield and more."I tramp a perpetual journey " as used in section 46 tell us his readers that the journey will soon beending. In section 51"I stay only a minute" he leaves us ( readers)so that he can finish his journey.

Also, Whitman has used symbols extensively to illustrate various states of "self". Perfume represents individuals ,house and rooms represents universal.Grass is the central symbol to explain the divinity in the ordinary ."the grass is itself a child,the produced bable of the vegetation ",in sec 6.

Imagery.Whitman uses seemingly random and vivid descriptions of elements in nature that collectively unify the spiritual ideas in the poem."The atmosphere is not a perfume ,it has no taste of distillation,it is odourless"."The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple bough's wage". The two convey the energy emanating from nature and its spiritual effect on self.