You might want to think about the kind of imagery that
Whitman creates and uses in this intensely visual part of his poem. In number 10,
Whitman presents us with a series of different images, describing himself as riding in
the wilderness, sharing chowder with clam-diggers, witnessing a marriage of a trapper
into an Indian family and sheltering a runaway slave. Each of these episodes are
designed to convey Whitman's idea of a self that embraces and is in union with other
humans, nature, and the cosmos as a whole.
Certainly, out
of this selection, one of the images that clearly stands out is the marraige of the
trapper into the Indian family. Note how this is described and how Whitman creates this
image precisely so we can share in it:
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest
mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls
protected
his neck, he held his bride by the hand,
She had long
eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks descended upon
her
voluptuous limbs and reach'd to her
feet.
There is a very strong
visual element to this description, as we see the "luxuriant beard and curls" of the
trapper, and the way he protectively holds his wife's hand. Likewise we can see the
length of the hair of the bride and imagine how they cover her "voluptuous limbs."
Whitman therefore creates a memorable image that helps convey another scene that shows
how the ideal "self" is in union with everything and everyone.
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