Reconciliation Analysis

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be
utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly
wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world:
... For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw
near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the
coffin.

.: :.

The "Word" Whitman refers to in the first line is, of course, "reconciliation" -- the poem's title. He draws on natural imagery ("beautiful as the sky"), he plays at contradictions ("beautiful that war") to get at the healing power of reconciliation. But what does he mean my reconciliation? At first, he seems to be talking about natural forces - death, night, time - that cleanse ("wash again, and ever agin this soil'd world"). These natural elements seem to negate man's unnatural acts ("war," "deeds of carnage").

In the last three lines, he redefines "reconciliation" in personal, human terms. Whitman locates the poem in a specific time and place: a funeral. And he identifies the speaker as an agent in the drama - perhaps a soldier, perhaps the dead man's killer - <em>not</em> the omniscient narrator he seemed to be in the first lines.

And suddenly the poem is littered with first-person words ("my, myself, I,"). The speaker identifies with the dead man ("divine as myself"). And we see a different sort of reconciliation - the gentle kiss of apology/foregiveness that a soldier places on the cheek of his vanquished foe.




| Posted on 2006-05-02 | by Approved Guest