How Does Walt Whitman Show Transcendentalism

People normally try to find ways to become spiritual and connect to the natural life around them. According to Google’s definition system, Transcendentalism means “an idealistic philosophical and social movement that developed in New England around 1836 in reaction to rationalism”.To Walt Whitman and the other Transdentalist artists that followed along side with him all believed that being connected to nature was a must. As Henry David Thoreau once said, “Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers.” Thoreau was also a very big Transdentalist. Transcendentalists were strong believers in the power of the individual. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the Romantics, but differed by an attempt to embrace, or at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science. It can also be seen as connecting the human soul to nature. Walt Whitman was a strong believer in this. Thus, most of his works portrayed Transcendentalist ideas. In the poem, Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, he shows the reader exactly what he thinks life is about and the Transcendentalist way of thinking about life.

“Now I will

“The grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, darker than the colorless beards of old men, dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths… And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.” Whitman keeps phrasing the thought of darkness in somewhat different ways but they all relate to the same idea. Whitman uses the idea of grass to show that everything that lives must die and go away but the grass stays. The grass is there no matter what and it shows man that God is still here, watching and protecting man. The grass also represents life from death. Whitman says “ the beautiful uncut hair of graves,” which symbolises that the earth is made up partly of the dead and life, grass, grows from that