Walt Whitman’s American Dream Turned Nightmare: A Romanticized Vision of War Versus the Harsh Reality
Walt Whitman’s two poems, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” and “The Wound-Dresser” bookend the Civil War. When comparing “Beat! Beat! Drums,” written at the beginning of the Civil War to “Wound-Dresser” written near the end, it is apparent that there is a shift in Whitman’s attitude towards the war and its impact on American society. The first conveys a sense patriotism and a feverish excitement towards the impending war, while the latter shatters this illusion and confronts the ugly and brutal realities of war.
Written in the midst of the war’s escalation, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” is a patriotic rally call for the North. Unaware of the nightmare that would unfold, American’s at the time had a sense of hope and solidarity with one another. Through the use figurative language, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” gives the reader a sense of this powerful force sweeping across all of America. Whitman uses the drums and bugles as symbols of the war itself. The loud beating of drums cannot be tuned out, playing so loudly that they disrupt people’s lives. Similarly, the call to war cannot be ignored and will disrupt the current state of society without regard. Whitman writes, “Stop for no expostulation, Mind not the timid -- mind not the weeper or prayer.” The call requires that people put their luxuries on hold--“Are there beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds”--because it is time to unite and fight.
In “The Wound-Dresser,” it is clear that Whitman’s glorified illusion of the war had been shattered, and he had attained a more realistic understanding of war’s brutal nature. In contrast with the use of figurative language in his former poem, "The Wound Dresser”, published at the end of the war, uses literal language to convey war’s ugly aftermath. In the poem, a war veteran narrates his experience as a wound-dresser in a military hospital with an uncomfortable amount of detail about the blood and gore he dealt with. “An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail, Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again...Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive.” While disturbing, these gruesome details reveal that there is nothing honorable about violence, bloodshed, and senseless death. It is clear that Whitman is disturbed by more than just the gore. Phrases such as “Priceless blood,” “Come sweet death! In mercy come quickly,” and “...in my breast a fire, a burning flame” suggest the despair and anger Whitman feels in recognizing the inhumanity of war.
The contrast between Walt Whitman’s two war poems is similar to the contrast between “The War Prayer,” a piece by Mark Twain and “War is Sin” a chapter in the book “The World As It Is; Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress” by Chris Hedges. Similar to the glorification of war in “Beat! Beat! Drums!” “The War Prayer” describes the call to war as “a time of great and exalting excitement.” It continues to explain that during the war prayer, “In every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, and the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering.” The American Dream is alive in their hearts and they are hopeful. Yet, in their prayers for victory, they are failing to acknowledge the repercussions that follow a victory; a defeat, and all the ugliness and bloodshed that comes with it. In contrast, “War is Sin,” like “The Wound-Dresser” sheds light on the the true nature of war. It accounts the profound struggles of veterans dealing with PTSD and explains that although war may seem noble on the surface, beneath the surface, it is a sin which “turns the moral order upside-down (277).
WORKS CITED
Hedges, Chris. "War Is Sin." The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress. New York: Nation, 2010. 275-78. Print.
Twain, Mark. The War Prayer. Digital image. Web.