Happiness In Walt Whitman's I, Too, Sing America Singing

For Americans happiness can be many things. For some it may be money for others it may be freedom. American happiness is when an American reaches a point in their life in which they are truly happy. Americans pursue happiness in many ways and it can be fulfilled.

There are many ways in which Americans pursue happiness. There is not just a single thing that is considered happiness by everyone. In Walt Whitman's poem I Hear America Singing, he speaks of how all of these people with different occupations and styles of life and America is what makes them happy. For some Americans this may be true. Many people come from all around the world to live in America. 25 years later, in response to Walt Whitman's poem, Langston Hughes wrote I, Too, Sing America. Hughes speaks of how just because he is black he isn't treated like others. He is unable to eat at the table when there are guests, and he sees it as funny because today they may see him as a lesser person but tomorrow, he will be eating at the table and be seen as an equal. These two examples while having very similar views on what happiness is they couldn’t be further from each other. While Walt Whitman felt that Americans found happiness through hard work and labor, and Langston Hughes says that happiness for him is to be accepted and seen as an equal.

While many people feel like they are not capable of achieving true happiness it is possible. In Sandra Cisneros' essay, Straw into Gold: The Metamorphosis of the Everyday, she speaks of how she needed to stray from the conventional

In all honesty it is everything but it is also nothing. It is tailored to everybody individually. There is not only one type of happiness and there is also not just one way to achieve it. As long as there are still dreamers and hard workers in the world, happiness can still be accomplished. What is happiness to you, and what are you going to do to achieve