Song of Myself categorizes the concept of the American self as Whitman creates the conflict between the individual and the society encapsulating love, life, death, the material and the spiritual within one paradigm. He then reconciles the spiritual with the material and presents the union as the equalizing of individuals in society.
Song of Myself" is one of the two strongly personal and autobiographical poems in Leaves of Grass. Writing during the mid-nineteenth century when the concept of democracy and individualism was creating a focus on the human aspect of progress., Whitman's poems allowed a reconciliation of the soul with the human experience. Using the stream-of-consciousness technique he presented a rambling sequence of ideas and impressions to flow freely through a character's mind. In "Song of Myself" we see Whitman's tumble and mixture of private sensation and external universal experience that sharply contrasts to the Victorian stiffness of his day. His beliefs in equality, his optimistic faith in democracy, his frank approach to subjects that were not openly discussed, and his elevation of the position of women find plentiful examples in our own times.
At a time when the civil war in America had created unprecedented suffering and the slave issue had challenged the very concept of the self, Whitman tried to present to his audience the value of the individual. The conflict in American society was more between religion and science and the superiority of race. Through a development of the 'self' represented through various metaphoric representations Walt Whitman negates the conflict's and allows the readers to realize that 'nature' and 'materialism', 'humans' and 'spirits' are all united in the journey of life, thus together, people have to progress rather than being divided on issues of little value. Consider as he writes, "I do not call one greater and one smaller, / That which fills its period and place is equal to any" (1140-41) these words reconciles the different races in society as one while the words, "Out of the dimness opposite equals advance.... Always substance and increase, / Always a knit of identity.... always distinction.... always a breed of life" (38-39) create the reconciliation of the self with society. For Whitman believed individuals and society were in a constant flux of change and only when they accepted themselves would they understand the difference in society and be at peace.
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