Page 322 - American Stories, A History of the United States

13.1

13.2

SonGS of oURSelveS Walt Whitman in the “carpenter portrait” that appeared in the first edition of his great
work, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. the poet’s rough clothes and slouch hat signify his identification with the common
people.

Whitman captured the exuberance and expansionism of Young America in his “song of the
Open Road”:
From this hour i ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,

Going where i list, my own master total and absolute,
……………………………

i inhale great draughts of space,
the east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
i am larger, better than i thought.

in Moby-Dick, Herman Melville produced a novel original enough in form and concept to
more than fulfill the demand of Young Americans for “a New Literature to fit the New Man in
the New Age.” but Melville was too deep a thinker not to see the perils behind the soaring ambi­
tion and aggressiveness of the new age. the whaling captain Ahab, whose relentless pursuit of
the white whale destroys himself and his ship, symbolized—among other things—the dangers
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