See How the Children Laugh as They Dance Between the Graves

I like kids. What can I say? They're cute, I've worked with them frequently, and yeah, I'm a young healthy female so I've got the whole "biological clock" thing kicking. Sue me.

Whatever the reason, reading through "Song of Myself", Whitman references children, or youth, quite frequently. Seriously. Quite. Frequently. This is gonna be a long blog...

Anywho, I find this motif, especially the way Whitman uses it, to be very flexible. Imagine CHILDREN being the center of one of those fancy cluster diagrams.

First, a child is one of the best examples of tabula rasa. Innocence, a blank slate, etc. There is even a Bible verse saying to be like children in order to enter Heaven (Matthew 18:3). Whitman was living in a time of turmoil, with war slowly approaching on the horizon. 

"There was never any more inception than there is now, 
Nor any more youth or age than there is now, 
And will never be any more perfection than there is now, 
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now." (pg.2)

"Births have brought us richness and variety, 

And other births will bring us richness and variety." (pg.37)

More so, the country was at a crossroad. There was a  pretty equal chance of America continuing to exist as a slave country, or becoming a truly free country. There was a new generation that would be raised in one of these worlds. Fragile minds to be molded one way or another. That's some scary opportunity there. 

Because if we've been told anything whenever we're caught cussing within twenty feet of a playground, it's that children are impressionable. So really, that generation that could be raised on love and equality of man, could also very easily be taught about inferiority between races.

"The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions," (pg.10)

The children are our future. Sends a shiver down your spine, yeah? 

Expanding on innocence, kids are fragile. Thus, in "Song of Myself", Whitman also gives a sense of children needing to be protected. Now you, as the reader, may relate in either position: as the protector, or the one needing protection.

"Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried 

and sentenced." (pg.31)

Moving on, we get to a point we discussed in class: Nature. More specific, how children relate to nature. As Hanley stated, children are much more in tune with their senses. It's not until we are older that we begin relying on silly things like logic and reason. Kids go by touch, instinct. And they question things that deserve questioning but adults often overlook.

"A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; 

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he." (pg.4)

"Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation." (pg.4)

"The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, 

I peeringly view them from the top." (pg.5)

"The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the 

musical rain," (pg.10)

I think kids respect nature more than adults, because they haven't had their sense of awe and wonder beaten out of them yet...

Next, we get to tie in with another one of Whitman's fun motifs. SEX. Because come on, if you're gonna talk about sex that much, you're eventually gonna be faced with one of the natural results of sex. Children. 

"The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it 

off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots, 
The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne 
her first child, 
The clean-hair'd Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the 
factory or mill," (pg.10)

Kids are also a natural symbol of life. The beginning of that circle everyone goes on about...

"I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and 

am not contain'd between my hat and boots, 
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, 
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good." (pg.5)

"What do you think has become of the young and old men? 

And what do you think has become of the women and children?" (pg.5)

"I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt 

stick at night." (pg.14)

"It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried, 

Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side, 
Nor the little child that peep'd in at the door, and then drew back 
and was never seen again, 
Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with 
bitterness worse than gall," (pg.37)

...So Whitman pairs it seamlessly with the other end of the circle: Death. Young and old. Which, in my opinion, actually gives the poem an interesting sense of immortality. Not of the individual, but of the whole. One dies as another is born. A never ending, smooth cycle of life going on.

But now let's move beyond the birth itself, and look at the implications. For when a child is born, so is a mother.

"Tenderly will I use you curling grass, 

It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, 
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, 
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out 
of their mothers' laps, 
And here you are the mothers' laps." (pg.4)

"I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, 

And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken 
soon out of their laps." (pg.4)

"Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female, 

For me those that have been boys and that love women, 
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted, 
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the 
mothers of mothers, 
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears, 
For me children and the begetters of children." (pg.5)

"Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it," (pg.24)

"Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly," (pg.26)

"The mother of old, condemn'd for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her 

children gazing on," (pg.27)

"By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for 

every person born," (pg.34)

"Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, 

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it." (pg.38)

Mothers are protection, they are a guiding force. They are the nurturing that may determine a child's fate. Think Virgin Mary here. Whitman weaves in a sense of love, dedication, and heritage simply by mentioning that these children are not alone. They have mothers.

Finally, through kids, Whitman displays a theme of growth. 

"I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, 

Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, 
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man," (pg.11)

"Come my children, 

Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates, 
Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass'd his prelude on 
the reeds within." (pg.34)

"No shutter'd room or school can commune with me, 

But roughs and little children better than they." (pg.41)

"O span of youth! ever-push'd elasticity! 

O manhood, balanced, florid and full." (pg.38)

Let me tell you something, kids are not. stagnant. In ANY WAY. Trust me, they don't even know the meaning of the word (and I'm not even taking a crack at the educational system). Children are constantly in movement, physically (running, playing, experiencing the world), and mentally (learning, questioning, wondering). They are always growing, in some way. Part of the appeal of Whitman's poetry is the idea of the poem changing you (remember in class? It was like that crazy math thing were you go in the box and... whatever, you know what I mean). So Children can be a good way to express this, the idea that through whatever you experience in this poem, you may grow up a little, or perhaps regain some of the childishness that you had lost. But either way, same as a child, you will grow.

So there you have it. One of the reasons I love this motif, and why I chose it in the first place, is because of the way it weave within several other motifs as well. It is a backbone, giving substance and meaning throughout the entire poem in a way that is easy to relate to and envision. 

Peace out, chitlens.