Who Is Now Reading This?
Who Is Now Reading This? - meaning Summary
Reader and Self Mirrored
Whitman directly addresses an imagined reader, speculating who might be reading and what they might know or feel about him. He then turns the same scrutiny inward, admitting self-puzzlement, self-derision, secret tenderness, and persistent moral failings. The poem frames identity as reciprocal: reader and speaker mirror and judge one another, while the speaker accepts ongoing imperfection and unavowed feelings as part of himself.
Read Complete AnalysesWHO is now reading this? May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past life, Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me, Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions and egotisms with derision, Or may-be one who is puzzled at me. As if I were not puzzled at myself! Or as if I never deride myself! (O conscience-struck! O self-convicted!) Or as if I do not secretly love strangers! (O tenderly, a long time, and never avow it;) Or as if I did not see, perfectly well, interior in myself, the stuff of wrong-doing, Or as if it could cease transpiring from me until it must cease.
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