The poems that Walt Whitman wrote in the second half of the 19th century differed radically from his earlier ones. The advent of capitalism had a tremendous impact on the lives of the people. In the manipulative and calculative rat race, principles were relegated and human concerns sidelined. People in such a situation, in response to the misery and atrocities around turned a detached observer as echoed in the title “I Sit and Look Out”. The verb in the title ‘sit’ and its capitalization in the first line –is an attempt to underline the action of the onlooker. It implies that the speaker is idle and has no intention to do anything about the situation. Also, the idea of looking out highlights how he in the confinement of complacency, is far removed from the suffering multitudes. The verbal phrase ‘look out’ also points to his concern of his own safety. The use of free verse echoes the continuity of the situation. The tone of the poem is pessimistic and the imagery presented is apocalyptic.
I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
The speaker states that he ‘sees’ and looks upon the sorrows of the dystopian world; the oppression and shame. The idea of the speaker “looking upon” points to the fact that he considers himself at a higher altitude far away from all this. Paroxysmal sobs can be heard from youth stifled with the disillusionment of the World War. Having an albatross hung around their neck ,they are remorseful for their actions. Still lower, the speaker visualizes the mother taken advantage of by her very own children. She lies emaciated, distressed dying in solitude, when she needs her children the most. The speaker also sees the wife misused by her own husband, and cheated by him. The husband comes across as a callous lover who seduces young women and ruthlessly deceives them.
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid,I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest,
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these–all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,See, hear, and am silent.
His eyes demarcate emotions that attempt to camouflage themselves. These emotions pertain to jealousy and unrequited love that hides its feelings to mask the ego. For the speaker, these are mere sights, and he does not possess any insights regarding them.
The onlooker witnesses the aftermath of wars, virulent diseases and autocracy. He beholds martyrs and prisoners- a byproduct of the terrible battles fought. In a gruesome image, we picture sailors throwing people out of the ship so that the remaining survive. It sounds the policy of survival of the fittest. He observes the poor, laborers and negroes treated like objects in the capitalist world subject to penury, repression and deterioration. He catalogues this collective collapse of humanity piled one upon the other. He see, hears them, yet is silent. He neither analyzes these nor makes any comment on these sights. Thus the whole poem comes across as a satire on the standpoint of the modern observer.
© Rukhaya MK 2011
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June 14, 2015 at 1:48 pm
I don’t read this poem as satire. I read it as the singular example of Whitman actually being self critical. He is telling the reader that of course he sees the horrors that human beings inflict upon each other but don’t expect him to say anything more on the matter. He hears, sees and is silent, and the silence throughout Leaves of Grass is deafening. He writes nothing at all about the ongoing slaughter of native Americans. He even goes so far as to lament the death of Custer and all his brave beautiful young men with lovely bodies. “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors” utilizes racist stereotypes of blacks. He twice in the poem describes a “wooly headed black “, “rolling her darkly eyes” woman as “hardly human.” How could anyone write poems celebrating the achievements of Lincoln (“the man I love”) without once mentioning that Lincoln freed America’s slaves and ended slavery. According to Whitman, the one thing Lincoln accomplished worthy of note was the defeat of secession, which Lincoln himself came to view as secondary to having ended slavery. Whitman lived during American capitalism’s most virulent stage: child labor, rapid industrialization entirely at the expense of workers, no labor laws, trade unions illegal. It was the time of the robber barons who grew obscenely rich off the lives of women and children as well as men. And Whitman’s outrage– forget outrage, how about just a mention– nada.
Whitman is an egotist my his own admission and brays that he will tell the world what American democracy is all about– its athletic, robust democracy. This invites a look at how accurately he reached his mark. He missed by miles. What he presents to the world is a white wash, America sanitized. He presents the Songs of Innocence only and suggests that that’s the entire story, even though he knows better. He’s a loud mouth that goes on and on with interminable lists in which he includes women, blacks. even red men but look for particulars and there are none to find. Whitman holds a richly undeserved position in American literature. As he sanitized American history, his own image has been equally sanitized.