For You O Democracy

While Whitman’s poems often focused on unification and community, many—like “For You O Democracy”—celebrated individualism within the context of that unification and community. In “For You O Democracy,” the individual is the backbone of the unification that happens in the poem. The repetition of the phrase “I will” (Lines 1, 2, 3, 6, 8) creates the sense of the individual’s determination. In essence, individualism becomes the essence of the ideal democracy for which the speaker advocates in the poem. The repetition of the phrase “I will” also places emphasis on the first-person pronoun “I.” Individualism is not only a place of isolation in the poem; it is also a place of adhesiveness, because to respect others for their individuality forms love, which ultimately fuses everyone together.

Like Dickinson and Emerson, Whitman heavily relied on nature as a theme in his poetry. In “For You O Democracy,” Whitman incorporates images of the sun, of “magnetic lands” (Line 3), and other various natural imagery that would have resonated with common Americans during Whitman’s time. The speaker of the poem not only celebrates nature, but the speaker also uses nature as a backdrop for American