Walt Whitman was a man that wrote from the deepest thoughts from within him. Whitman wrote from many states of mind. His writings connect a lot with the present life and the after-life, the soul. Sometimes he even wrote from his imagination and his fantasies. Whether he was writing about the people around him or just his life, he was writing about the nature of life.From the excerpts that we have read from Leaves of Grass, I feel that Whitman is a very deep writer. I noticed that he wrote a lot about life, whether he was talking about his own or not. His writings go beyond what we can see, touch, and smell. ...view middle of the document...
If you look at it from his perspective, he was talking about the life that you have after death. Just because you die physically and your body no longer remains, it doesn't mean you don't live on. Your soul and spirit still lingers. Your soul goes and does things you never got a chance to do in your present life. This is exactly what Whitman wanted with his life. He was unhappy at the time and all he could think of was escaping the world of reality and being able to live carefree of worries. In his after-life was where he knew he could experience the different things he never got to in his present life."Why do we pray?" People pray because it's part of their religion and think that it will help them rid themselves of their sins that they have committed. People pray because their god is someone they confide with. At that point in time Whitman was probably starting to doubt the real existence of God. He may have lost faith in God, by God not doing what Whitman prayed for.Whitman was a strong and powerful writer that enables us, today, to understand the hardships and surroundings of life from a different perspective. It is the outlook of the present life that gave hope to Whitman. It was in the after-life where Whitman foreseen the utopian kind of life. It was the after-life that Whitman talked about; in a way it gives us all hope, especially if your not leading a happy life.But is there really an after-life? I guess that's for us to find out.