The Industrial Revolution brought major changes in America. New inventions allowed for new ways to produce consumer goods, which, in turn, benefitted the economy. Things were looking up as “the growing prosperity of many Americans generated enormous confidence in themselves and their country” (Belasco 486). The old ways of doing things were thrown out and innovative ideas were praised.
The interest in the new bled into literature as well. People wanted true American literature, something completely separate from that of Europe (Belasco 484). Many moved on from the traditional novel or poem and began to focus on the increasingly popular short story, “which strongly appealed to the growing number of readers in the United States and which American writers brought to a new level of originality and distinction” (Belasco 485). Literature became focused on the self, fantasy, and nature and made heavy use of metaphors.
Somewhat restored recording of Walt Whitman reading his poem "America"
Walt Whitman is the hero. He was “America’s poet,” capturing the spirit of the people in his writing. His poetry encapsulates the everyman. In “One’s-Self I Sing” Whitman connects his own personal identity to the identity of America as a whole. There is the individual and the collective, the personal experience and the universal truth, and Whitman molds these together to create the picture of America.
“One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nore brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form
complete is worthier far,
The Female equality with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for the freest action form’d under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.”
–“One’s-Self I Sing” by Walt Whitman
“Whitman’s ‘I’… is the cosmic ‘I’ of all peoples who seek freedom, decency, and dignity, friendship and equality between individuals and races all over the world.”
-Langston Hughes