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.

Journal 37 - RXN to Whitman's Language of the Self

Upon reading Mark Bauerlein's "Whitman's Language of the Self, I thought of many questions in my mind. Like What the heck is up with the rhetoric language of the Self; "If Whitman requires figurative language in order to speak or to write the self, even when aiming explicitly to unveil the self and not to clothe it in tropes, one wonders whether sheer self-expression of the kind Whitman prefigures is possible. If figurative language is the seminal ingredient of poetry, can Whitman compose a poem matching his self? Could he discover a pure language of the self, a language which, though thetorical, would have a new rhetoric based on the directions and idiosyncrasies of Whitman's desires, Whitman would create a poem unparalleled in its evocation of self" (Bauerlein). Yes, I do know this language does not really exist but it still confuses me quite a bit thinking about a language that can describe the type of person you are. It is just above my level of thinking. It is also a Sunday so my level of thinking is way down because I do not want to be doing any homework. I also already have a bad case of senior-itis. So that disease is not helping my motivation to think at the moment. Another thing in the essay that stood out to me was when Bauerlein talks of how Whitman was expansive and egotistical. Yes, at first glance, it would appear Whitman is very egotistical, but he really is not that bad. He is just a confident person and he shows this within his writings. I think that is is cool that Bauerlein almost goes into a psychological dissection of Whitman;'s brain. He talks of how things in his childhood may have given him this confidence. It is really quite amazing to think that there are stages in people's lives when they are children that give them confidence. He says that this "mirror stage" is when the self of people begin to form. So you are you before you think you are you.




Bauerlein, Mark. "Whitman's Language of the Self." American Imago 44, no. 2 (Summer 1987). Quoted as "Whitman's Language of the Self" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Song of Myself, Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts on File, Inc. . Web. Feb 26, 2011.

Journal 36 - Favorite Meal

I do not know if I have just one favorite meal. Most food is my friend. And by my friend I mean I like them. I have several meals that I would consider my favorite meal, and all of them are equally delicious. One favorite meal of mine, which we are having tonight, is steak, twice baked potatoes, and green bean casserole. Oh. My. Goodness. This is definitely my favorite summer meal by far. I usually do the grilling for my family and I grill the steaks to what I like to call perfection. Most professional grillers would not consider it perfection, but to me, it is so tasty. I grill the steaks to medium rare. They are nice and they look tasty on the outside, but then they leak a small amount of dark juice. As they are being grilled, I sprinkle first steak seasoning on it. Then I put some spicy broiled steak seasoning on it to give it a different but tasty flavor. Then they are served and yummy. Then the twice baked potatoes and green bean casserole are equally delicious. My mom makes the best twice baked potatoes in the history of man kind. Another one of my favorite meals would be just anything from Hu hot. Hu hot is an asian stir fry place in iowa that I went to last weekend when I was visiting my sister at Iowa State last weekend. But what happens is you go through this buffet type thing and then they cook it in front of you on a giant, extremely hot grill. But you grab a bowl, then you have three different kinds of noodles, all these vegetables and then there are things like lettuce, basically anything you can think of, they have it available. Then you pick sauces to put on it and you have to have at least six spoons of sauce, and I make my stir fry spicy because I love spicy food. It is hard to describe. But just imagine the best food possible and that is what Hu hot is.