John Marsh's Whitman

The chapter of John Marsh’s literary critique on Whitman regarding death, “Congratulations! You’re Dead!” ultimately summarizes the central argument about Whitman’s regard for death and afterlife. Through Whitman’s lines of poetry that express a finality to physical life being a regard of the science he was fascinated by, coupled with Marsh’s sincere analysis of Whitman’s art and reality; rather, his poetry and his life in the 19th century, Whitman saw death as being a simple passing into another form of life. Although when confronted with those words, one may consider the common Hindu or Buddhist concern for those words and think of reincarnation, for a science enthusiast such as Whitman, the life that becomes another thing upon the ending of one thing does so on the atomic level. Because of what is now coined the law of the conservation of matter, we collectively know that organic life does not cease to exist, it merely changes form. For the physical body, death is simply life beginning anew, and for the “soul” or the “really me”—names Whitman gives to his idea of the human spirit—the part of us that makes us inherently different from one another in the way our physical being does not, lives on somehow. So, when Whitman writes, “as to you Corpse, I think you are good manure,” he suggests the benevolent role we all inevitably play deals with only our bodies, our spirit lives on, and for Whitman, this is great news.

Although at times, Marsh tends to disagree with Whitman about life’s finality, or at the very least find less solace in it than he’d like, both Marsh and Whitman offer inciteful anecdotes on death’s role in life. In addition to Whitman’s direct inclusion of such topics in his poetry, plenty of examples of an implicit considering of death are found in his poetry, as Whitman likes to call upon readers from the grave. In “Songs of Myself,” Whitman tells the reader, “I considered long and seriously of you before you were born,” referring to his consideration of the miracle that is life, while implying that he lived long before the presumed reader. In “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Whitman’s lines, “Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, and yet was hurried,” suggest once again that he lived in a time before the reader, and that time, while linear, has a way of layering human experiences on top of one another. Beyond these nuanced lines that fragilely suggests his own long-deceased life, Whitman’s appreciation for the strict law of Gravity, “implied that the universe made sense,” per Marsh. For the universe to demonstrate something so inherent to our world, so vital and unyielding, it suggests that other factors in everyday life could be as rigid, could follow a plan, could garner the same outcome trial after trial. Explicitly, Whitman deals with the life of men being constantly indebted to the earth, and only by way of personal death, are those debts repaid; he writes, “It [the earth] gives such divine materials to men and accepts such leavings from them at last,” and goes on to the part about our corpses becoming “good manure,”.

While questions are most assuredly answered regarding death in this chapter, it does leave a lot to be desired by way of security, regarding the human spirit. Marsh’s disagreement with Whitman on what really happens to the human spirit upon either death or mutilation of the brain, expressed in the example of the railroad worker and the dynamite, leaves the reader at a crossroads of relief for the worries of what happens with the physical body, but discordant feeling of the destiny of the human spirit, whether or not it even prevails beyond physical death.

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