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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What archaic word in Section 31 refers to an ant?

2. The poet tells the dying in Section 40, “I dilate you with” what?

3. Who does the author say “embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them” at the end of Section 37?

4. Who “shoulder their carbines and keep watch,” according to the poet in Section 37?

5. What adjective describes the city’s houses in the beginning of Section 33?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the purpose of the religious allusion in Sections 41 and 42 of the poem?

2. What conclusions does the poet reach in Section 31?

3. How does the poet relate truth and nature in Sections 30 and 31?

4. What sense and expression is discussed in the opening of Section 25?

5. What events take place in the battle described in Section 34 of the poem?

6. What is implied of “the journey” of life in Section 44?

7. What setting does the narrator take the reader to in Section 34?

8. How are the Native Americans depicted in Section 39?

9. What reaction does the poet have to his circumstances in the opening of Section 38?

10. With what characters does the narrator relate in Section 37?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the poet’s references to the Texas War of Independence. What were Whitman’s political views regarding the war? How many soldiers died in the battles? How does Whitman describe the Battle of the Alamo in this section of the poem? What central battle is his focus?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the symbolism of the blade of grass that Whitman uses throughout “Song of Myself.” What have critics and scholars associated this motif with symbolically? How many times does the poet refer to the blade of grass in the poem? How does the grass relate to human existence?

Essay Topic 3

Describe and discuss the humanist, realist, and transcendentalist movements in literary history and Walt Whitman’s relationship to each of these movements. How can elements of these literary styles be seen in “Song of Myself”?

(see the answer keys)

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