Question

Excerpt from Leaves of Grass, a poem written by Walt Whitman

Answer 1

Question 7:

The heroe in this poem is the narrator.This person has a duty to a nation he  loves and belongs to.It is not any grass the narrator is describing, it is the grass merged with the land this person inhabits.The air he breathes is special, it is shared by men who were intrepid and settled in those lands so far away from what was known as the civilized world.He is ready to be the father to many generations who will , in the future, populate those lands.

Question 8:

Free verse was considered an innovation in those days.Whitman does not make use of the metrical tradition.He uses syntactic parallelism as in ..."These are really the thoughts..".."they are not original..."if they are not yours.."

Question 9

The second option summarizes his point of view of society.

In the poem there is a line that could explain this idea.."My tongue,every atom of my blood,

form´d from this soil,this air.."

Through these  lines we could see that  it is the land we inhabit that makes us no different from the others.Being a constituent  of  a nation, having the same tongue to speak is what in the end makes as much the same.We belong to a society with a history, the same history of our forebearers.