Walt Whitman: Poems Lesson Plan

Whitman makes some radical arguments in "I Sing the Body Electric." What are they, and how do you think they were received at the time they were published?

Whitman's main claim in the poem is that the body and the soul are one and the same--this is an idea that goes against the Christian beliefs that were widely held at the time (that said the body was a sinful thing to be transcended). Furthermore, Whitman argues that man and woman are equal, and all people (regardless of race) are equal. Again, this was a time when inequality permeated society in many ways, so these claims were surprising. People contemporary to Whitman were also very uncomfortable with the blatant...