33 pages • 1 hour read
Walt WhitmanI Sing the Body Electric
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1855A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Body and Soul
In the 1600s, Renee Descartes postulated a divide between the body and mind. Europeans carried this belief to America, believing the soul and body were distinct and sometimes at war with one another. The impulses of the body—sexuality, over-consumption, and even weakness—were meant to be overcome. Ideally, the body was to be tamed, not celebrated. The body was an object, and the mind should dominate and control it.
“I Sing the Body Electric” seeks to undo this dichotomy. Rather than denying the body, or condemning it, Walt Whitman “sing[s]” (Line 1) the body, stating more than once that the body is the soul and it is indeed electric. Science was just beginning to understand that electrical impulses animated the human body. Only a few years earlier, scientists had discovered that electricity could re-animate the leg of a dead frog. There was an invisible force that moved the parts of a person. The “body electric” (Line 1) means body and soul unity, the visible and invisible parts working together as a single entity, one made up of the other.
In Sections 4 and 5, the speaker declares that being around people is enough for him, and it pleases his soul “well” (Line 52). This is another argument that the soul is part of the body. Physical activity, touch, and communion are not mere acts of carnality but also acts of higher connection. This likely references judgments from the time that having sex was a carnal act, and giving birth was something to hide and be ashamed of.
Instead, Whitman declares that procreation is an act of encasing and calling forth the soul, transforming it from an act of lust to an act of holiness. The speaker tells women, “Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest, / You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul” (Lines 67-68). He may also be making an argument against the position that women were inferior to men, declaring they are that which encloses the soul—thus elevating their importance.
Whitman demonstrates that the body can be the instrument through which a soul expresses its higher values. The body is the soul, and the soul-body expresses itself through its actions: “If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred, / And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted, / And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful than the most beautiful face” (Lines 125-27).
The Idealized Man
In “I Sing the Body Electric,” Whitman celebrates actions and activities of the body that were in alignment with Christian values. He depicts men and women as healthy, achieving “the exquisite realization of health” (Line 163). He demonstrates and thus encourages others to strive for this ideal.
Whitman describes people at work engaged in healthy activities. They wrestle, put out fires, get married, and procreate. He does not mention ways people use the body to violate norms, nor does he depict any unhealthy physical activity. He writes in Section 1, “Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?” (Line 5). And later, in Section 8, “Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool that corrupted her own live body? / For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves” (Lines 128-29).
The farmer in Section 3 “drank water only” (Line 41), which references the temperance movement. In the 1800s and throughout the history of Christianity, drinking alcohol has been frowned upon. The farmer hunts, fishes, farms, and brings forth children. All of these demonstrate a body acting in accordance with religious doctrine of the time, built also with skills and activities America needed to build the new nation.
The farmer produces his own food and creates his family, begetting children who beget children. He gathers a loving community around him who give him gifts. As he lives into old age, the speaker calls him “wise” (Line 37) and depicts him continuing to fish and hunt into his eighties. He passes to his children his good health, wisdom, and his dedication to growing America itself.
When Whitman describes mankind in Section 6, the speaker says:
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes soundings at last only here (Lines 78-83),
This is an idealized version of a man. He “likes [knowledge] always, he brings every thing to the test of himself” (Line 82). This describes a man who consistently grows intellectually, accepts and even seeks out challenges, and tests his body and mind. This kind of man was necessary in exploring, settling, and building new civilizations throughout the continent.
Whitman’s assertion that “pride is for him” (Line 80) and “[t]he full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul” (Line 81) is distinctly American. European literature and the Christian religion discourage pride, but Whitman saw this as an intrinsic component of the American character. The individual needed to break free from the governance of others and to have the confidence to create a new nation. The poem does not celebrate Whitman’s own pride or ability, but uplifts and celebrates the value of all people. The speaker takes as much pride in his fellow human beings as he does in himself.
Equality Through Bodies
“I Sing the Body Electric” lists multiple kinds of bodies in its song. He emphasizes not the socially extraordinary or elevated, but the kind of person Americans might aspire to be. This was in keeping with democratic values. Less typical was his valuing of women, enslaved people, and immigrants. The speaker argues they are equal to others because they share the commonality of a body, and they are sacred because the human body is sacred.
In the line, “Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb” (Line 60), he suggests that male and female bodies complement one another. One acts upon the other in sexual intercourse, making it possible for life to go on. The analogy of “love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn, / Undulating into the willing and yielding day, / Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day” (Lines 62-64) suggests a purpose to love-making, which is “working surely and softly” (Line 62) to produce children.
In Section 6, the speaker is quick to clarify, “The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place, / He too is all qualities” (Lines 76-77). The speaker elaborates on the male body differently than he does the female, putting the emphasis on his “action and power” (Line 77), as well as knowledge and pride.
Whitman writes clearly of his belief in equality:
The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the laborers’ gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.
(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion) (Lines 85-91).
He presumes that the reader may not have thought about this, and asks, “Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?” (Line 92). He interrogates the reader, making the argument that all things of the Earth are meant for everyone, not just for some and not for others. The speaker elaborates on this in Section 8, focusing on the body of an enslaved individual at an auction and the ignorance of the one selling that body: “In this head the all-baffling brain, / In it and below it the makings of heroes” (Lines 103-04). The enslaved person’s body too is a marvel, capable of wonderous things, yet the auctioneer does not see those things. He uses rhetorical devices to ask, “(Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in parlors and lecture-rooms?)” (Line 113), and argues that a body loving another body is exactly the same no matter whose body it is.
Whitman then reiterates that the enslaved person’s body will beget other people and produce generations of human beings to come. He notes the commonality between the power and wonder of a free man’s body and an enslaved man’s body, trying to convince the reader to empathize and see all bodies as vehicles of empathy.
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