The United States has had a history of turmoil and events of drastic changes that rupture the social fabric, and because of this, intellectual minds of varying generations must respond for the sake of the people. For Walt Whitman, his lifetime took place during the Civil War, and with that came a wave of the worst instances of human behavior. Whitman, in response to the terrors and racial divide that paired with the Civil War, attempted to bring the country back together with his poetry. In a similar time of confusion, the Beats came to prominence just after WWII, and as a result addressed similar discomforts surrounding race and a country-wide division. Whitman and the Beats tended to their generation’s wounds in similar methods: intense and loving friendship, welcoming new experience, and freedom of language. The responses the Beats and Whitman gave to their respective time periods were similar in spirit, and adapted to the situation.
Within my research, the conversation takes place between primary sources from Whitman and the Beats, in order to draw points, critical articles to substantiate those points, and my own writing to make sense of the information with regards to the Beats, Whitman, and how they relate to one another. For the sake of drawing comparisons but also acknowledging that differences exist, a research paper seemed like the best method of fully expanding on what critics think about the similarities between the Whitman and the Beats.
The project’s purpose lies within driving home that Whitman was not the last remnant of American Romanticism, a movement that actually carried on through the turn of the century, and even into today, but under a different guise. An added feature of significance toward this project comes from the fact that “romanticism” is tied in with inherent principles that America was founded on, and therefore there will always be a romantic presence in some form in American discourse. It matters to me because I have always felt a connection to the Beats work and how idealized America reads through their lens; upon taking the Whitman class this year, I felt the same sort of feeling about the grandiose nature of America and all it has to offer. I have always felt there must be more to the connection between the Beats and Whitman, and this project was my chance to explore that.
I faced a real struggle given the different time periods the authors were facing. It is tough to be specific about what type of similarities of rhetoric a group of authors is pushing when the conceptualizations refer to vastly different things. However, I think I communicated properly how the time period does not matter all that much due to how universal the ideas were.
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