To a Pupil, I Hear It Was Charged Against Me

I'll admit, I'm not one for poetry. I've done my best to avoid taking any class that covers poetry, but it seems my luck has run out. However, I do find poetry interesting at times, especially when I can understand it. Whitman was an interesting read for me, particularly because I am not that familiar with his work. At first it seemed like Whitman's poems were just a bunch of non-sequitur thoughts all placed together in one book, but I remembered Whitman wrote about everything he saw and thought, so I suppose to him his poems are arranged in some type of order.

The message in To A Pupil really resonated with me. Whitman writes, the greater change you are trying to achieve, the more of yourself or "personality" you will have to invest into your cause. He speaks of commanding a room with presence, something I'm sure he accomplished with is almost 6 foot frame, which was tall for the time. I thought that all history-making leaders, whether good or bad, all had some form of charisma and presence. Whitman insists that the pupil must give up everything to "rest not" until he has created this Personality. This stuck with me, not because I'm trying to change the world, but because to attain something you want you have to invest all of yourself to achieve it. I'm assuming this resonated with me because the closer I get to senior year, the more nervous I become about finding that "perfect" job after graduation, which I will probably have to start searching for in a few months.

Whitman's message in To A Pupil reminded me of I Hear It Was Charged Against Me. It seems like his stances in these two poems are extremely contradictory, in To a Pupil he advocates for reform and improving upon one's personality; while in I Heard It Was Charged Against Me he insists that his intentions are not to destroy institutions or disturb the status quo, but leave a legacy of brotherhood. Whitman confuses me a bit, although it seems as if he accepts his contradictions. Whitman was a progressive man for his time, he recognized the injustices in society, but as far as I know, doesn't do much to solve these problems. It seems as if he uses his writing to call others to action.