To a Pupil
To a Pupil - meaning Summary
Personality as Social Force
Whitman urges a pupil to cultivate a compelling, moral individuality that can effect social change. He presents personality as embodied—health, presence, self-respect—and argues that a strong, attractive character supplies the force needed for reform. The poem is a call to daily self-discipline: develop courage, realism, and elevated purpose until your distinct self commands and influences others. It links personal development directly to public efficacy.
Read Complete AnalysesIS reform needed? Is it through you? The greater the reform needed, the greater the personality you need to accomplish it. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet? Do you not see how it would serve to have such a Body and Soul, that when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impress’d with your personality? O the magnet! the flesh over and over! Go, dear friend! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness; Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.
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