Journal 38 - Ploughman

When we look into Walt Whitman's "As I Watch'd the Ploughman Plowing," we see two sides of both Christianity and the Everyman concepts into it. This is much like many of his other poems and they can be taken either way. "As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing,/Or the sower sowing in the fields—or the harvester harvesting,/I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies:/(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according)" (Whitman). When we look at this this poem from the Christianity concept, we see this ploughman, who potentially could be God. But there is this ploughman who is raising a field for a harvest and he is sowing the fields and tilling them. But then at the end, we are explained that the tillage is life and the harvest is death. This can be taken in multiple ways. We of course have the literal meaning of the poem where the ploughman is a farmer and the plant is alive throughout the course of the tilling and it then dies and is picked for its fruits. Then there is another meaning where the plant represents people and the ploughman is god and god grows the crops or people up into the beautiful crops and then we die, but the next season new crops are made or new people are born and grown once again. Then there is the meaning which I originally thought was in this poem. God once again represents the ploughman. The people are once again the crops. But this time god spends all of this time helping his crops or people grow to be good crops or people. Then the crops or people gradually become ready for harvesting and they are picked or the people die. But what a ploughman spends all of the hard work for is the reward of picking his crops in the harvest. So God has grown these people into what he wants them to be and now the people get to enjoy the reward of heaven.



Whitman, Walt. "As I Watch'd the Ploughman Ploughing." . Web. 23 Feb. 2011.