"Whitman's Image of the Self" was pretty interesting. It what nice to see another person's perspective of Whitman's writing style in his poetry, particularly because I am not a very big fan of his writing. Whitman's writing technique's are also explained very well, although I still do not like some of the things Whitman addressed and the manner in which he does so. The author of the article, Bauerlein, says that Whitman is basically egotistical and self-centered, which I agree with for the most part. Some of Whitman's writing serves the purpose to entertain and to teach, but I think the majority of Whitman's writing strays too far away from those purposes because he really does come across self-centered in my eyes.
On one hand, Whitman is very focused on portraying his idea of "self" in an extensive manner, and this accounts for some of the arrogance in Whitman's writing. It was necessary to explain his idea of "self" because it is something that he was very passionate about the idea. However, this still seems very egotistical for some reason. It might just be because I am already not a big fan of Whitman and I like that Bauerlein seems to have some of the same opinions about Whitman and his writing style as I do. Bauerlein also points out the harsher aspects of Whitman's poetry and how it related to the events of Whitman's life. There were a lot of things that I did not know about Walt Whitman (mostly because I never cared to learn anything about him) and I was surprised to learn about some of the things that happened to him. His homosexuality and abusive father were definitely obstacles in his life- his sexual orientation was not really accepted in society at the time and he was harmed by his father, the man who was supposed to take care of him. These harsh events are reflected in Whitman's writing through some of the darker tones that are present.
It is pretty important, I think, to know a little bit about the background of an author's life before you can analyze their poetry, novels, and etc. and fully understand them. This helps with interpreting the message that is meant to be conveyed and Bauerlein provided some of this background on Whitman's life.
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