American Literature
The Civil
War diminished Whitman's faith in democratic sympathy. While the cause of the war nominally furthered brotherhood and equality, the war itself was
a quagmire of killing. Reconstruction, which began to fail almost immediately after it was begun, further disappointed Whitman. His later poetry,
which displays a marked insecurity about the place of poetry and the place of emotion in general (see in particular "When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloom'd"), is darker and more isolated. Whitman's style remains consistent throughout, however. The poetic structures he employs are
unconventional but reflect his democratic ideals. Lists are a way for him to bring together a wide variety of items without imposing a hierarchy on
them. Perception, rather than analysis, is the basis for this kind of poetry, which uses few metaphors or other kinds of symbolic language.
Anecdotes are another favored device
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