“Mirages” and Whitman’s American Dream

The famous picture of Whitman that depicts him as a laborer

“Mirages” is one of the Whitman poems that has interested me the most thus far in our class; I am drawn to it by how different it feels from his other work, while at the same time it feels so quintessentially Whitman.  Considering the outside narrator and the theme of illusion and unreality, as well as the context in which it was written, I argue that this poem can be read as Whitman’s surrender of his egalitarian dream for America.   This poem is less obvious in its meaning than much of Whitman’s other work, which finds him stating his meaning outright (like his manifestos for America, or even his more reflective poems).  Whitman’s later work, as we saw in class, does include more poems that are driven by imagery and sense, as opposed to philosophical musings. Poems like “Twilight” and “The Dismantled Ship” offer short snippets of imagery on their face, and rely on the reader to interpret the meaning or feeling of the imagery.  Similarly, “Mirage” allows the reader to “listen in” on a “verbatim” conversation–Whitman is not offering us his thoughts and muses, he is presenting us with a conversation from which we must do the work of extracting the meaning.

Firstly–the title, “Mirages,” immediately implies that the poem will contain irrealities.  This is a novel choice for Whitman, who tends to write about concrete reality or else completely abstract metaphysical concepts.  The note under the title, which informs the reader that the poem is supposedly a record of a verbatim conversation with two coal miners in the desert of Nevada, introduces the humble laborer who will narrate the poem.  The fact that “Mirages” gives voice to a coal miner, even in a fleeting manner, serves to underline Whitman’s respect for, and wish to amplify the voice of, common laborers.  The tone of this poem is informal and conversational, even containing elements of a dialogue that Whitman does not natively speak, further cementing the idea that the poem is narrated by an “old miner.”  For instance, at one point the narrator says, “…And my mate there could tell you the like,” which does not sound like the way Whitman speaks in any of his other works. It is the casual, almost coarse dialect of a humble coal miner–those laborers for whom Whitman has such a fondness.  

The mirages experienced by coal miners mostly encompass prosaic scenes of life and death; there is nothing remarkable about them, but that is the point.  First there are the typical settings that serve as the backdrop for any “average” life: “the crowded streets of cities,” “farms and dooryards of home” (Whitman 652).  These are the everyday cities and towns of Whitman’s America. Then, the mirages include the commonplace events that take place in these settings, such as “weddings in churches,” “thanksgiving dinners,” and “trials in court” (Whitman 652).  These are all items that mark an average existence. The effect of cataloguing these different markers of an ordinary American life is the creation of a vision of a highly functioning America, wherein the most remarkable and noticeable things are not labor exploitation or civil war, but simply daily existence. 

These mirages only come to the coal miners under perfectly right conditions: “…now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset, / sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather…” (Whitman 652).  The scarcity of the mirages, not to mention their actual nature as unreal and imagined, suggests that the content of the visions is just as elusive. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “mirage” as “an illusion or fantasy; something that appears real or possible but is not in fact so” (OED Online).  An America that is ordinary, with the underlying implication being that its ordinariness is a symptom of its functionality, seemed very possible to Whitman in the early part of his life.  Soaring and visionary ideas of an egalitarian American, whose vital backbone consists of dignified laborers working closely with the earth, inundates his earlier poetry. Even considering his biography, we know that Whitman was a staunch advocate for equality and democracy well into the twilight of his life.  However, in Whitman’s lifetime, the role of the laborer in the United States economy was downgraded as industrialism and a robust (and exploitative) capitalist market cleared the way for themselves. Given this context, on reading this poem, I cannot help but speculate that Whitman gave up on his dream for America, and his “conversation” with these coal miners is his way of acknowledging how distant his vision for America has actually become from reality.  

Works Cited:

“mirage, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2019, www.oed.com/view/Entry/119067. Accessed 22 September 2019.