Question

Walt Whitman uses imagery throughout "I Hear America Singing." Explain the imagery he uses. Then analyze the impact of his use of imagery on the overall meaning of the poem. Be sure to use specific details to support your answer.

Answer 1

I Hear America Singing is a poem written by the famous American writer Walt Whitman. This poem is written in one of Whitman's most characteristic free verse style and it exemplifies the theme of musicality in his poetry.

This poem is like one of Broadway's plays, singing with the heart outside the chest. For Whitman, singing is both an expression of the individual and the universal, to bring one nation together. So, this poem also emphasizes nationality feelings as he mentions carpenters, deckhands, etc.

He uses different literature tools within the poem, but one of the most important ones is imagery and allegory. Imagery is defined as the use of figurative descriptions or illustration and allegory is the exaggerated expression of a word to emphasize a specific thing.

Allegory is shortly used to express Whitman's exaggeration in his writing style when he says "I hear America singing, the varied carols I sing", that means that everyone sang so loud that he could hear it just through the paper.

The imagery in the poem is found as he mentions lots of people and their professions, he uses every profession to express to bring all people together as a country.  The imagery in the poem is found as he mentions different types of laborers, to express the nationality feeling to join bonds between a nation. The musicality of the poem describes their work individually, to recognize the particularity and universality of every human being.

But the impact of the imagery usage shares the message Whitman wanted to share with the readers: the individuality of a human being and nationality feeling.