“The individual has always had to struggle to avoid being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will often feel alone and sometimes scared. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning oneself” - Friedrich Nietzsche. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay As a member of society, one is encouraged - often by the media, legislation and cultural tradition - to respond to certain social and behavioral expectations. Disregard for these social "norms", which attempt to make human behavior more predictable by standardizing it, is what made author and poet Walt Whitman controversial in his time; he challenged both individual and literary conformity throughout his work, choosing instead to personify the gap between personal desire and societal expectations. In his long and intimate epic Song of Myself, Walt Whitman reflects on this gap, particularly through the prism of religion, or lack thereof, and sexual imagery in his writings. Born and raised in the early 19th century, a time of political turbulence and white and evangelical supremacy, Whitman, influenced by notions of deism, chose to respect all religions but follow none. “Jehovah… Kronos… Osiris… Brahma, Buddha… Manito… Allah… the engraved crucifix… Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image, [I take] them all for what they are worth and not for a cent of more, admitting that they were alive and doing the work of their days... Accepting the divine outlines the better to fill them in myself... Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house... Without objecting to special revelations, [ I consider] a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand as curious as a revelation” (article 41). Here, Whitman refuses to associate himself with a single organized religion, instead suggesting that all religions and deities are neither false nor absolutely true, but also respectable in terms of philosophy, tradition, and scrutiny - a rather revolutionary notion for its era, in which Christianity and its faiths dominated the American cultural sphere. Historically, he did not let religion dictate his behavior like many Americans who feared "sinning." Whitman instead chose to chart his own path based on his own morals and desires, rather than his religious expectations, encouraging his readers to "no longer take things second or third hand, nor look through the eyes dead, nor feed. on the spectra [of] books,” but rather “listen to all points of view and filter them for yourself” (Section 2, both quotes). Furthermore, Whitman's rejection of religion is apparent in his distaste for the pious: "I think I could turn myself and live with animals...They don't sweat and complain about their condition, they don't stay awake in the dark and do not cry for their sins, they do not make me sick by discussing their duty to God... None kneels before another, nor before his kind who lived thousands of years ago » (Section 32). Whitman, disgusted by the blind allegiance of the devout to their gods, their churches, and their holy books, finds comfort in the purity of nature and its creatures. He prefers to live among Earth's creatures rather than be harassed and dictated to by those of God, choosing instead to follow his own spiritual path based on his own principles and ambitions, free from God's influence and the promise of Sky. This state of mind was rather revolutionary for its time,to the extent that the promise of heaven offered a comforting benefit of death to the largely religious American population. Overall, Whitman did not give in to the preeminent American religion, or religion in general, nor did he allow its doctrines to dictate his path, determine his personal moral rules, or judge and influence his behavior - which is further demonstrated by the author's then-controversial sexuality and sexual imagery. Humans within themselves harbor homosexual and heterosexual self-desires. Sex is simply a human experience, much stronger at uniting than dividing a human's relationships, both with their partners and with themselves. Whitman himself, seeking communion with all living beings, alluded to homosexual tendencies throughout his literary work. In an early version of Song of Myself, Whitman declared: “Prodigal! You gave me love! This is why I give you love! O passionate and unspeakable love! Thruster holds me tight, and I hold tight! We harm each other as the bride and groom harm each other” (Section 21 of Song of Myself, The Walt Whitman Archive). Disregarding social taboos by openly discussing his lustful desires, in this case with a man, Walt Whitman ignores social expectations and instead focuses on the desires of his own soul - the desire to satisfy his human nature by connecting intimately with its partners. This blatant literary eroticism was rare in Whitman's time and often sparked controversy and scorn from the conservative American mentality, in which sex was stigmatized (The Walt Whitman Archive) as an act of guilt, domination and of overall impurity if practiced outside the limits. of religious law. Whitman, however, continued to discuss sex and, ultimately, human nature throughout his work, ignoring the criticism he received because his poems deviated from the genteel Eurocentric standard. An example of this is his portrait of a woman watching twenty-eight young men bathing naked in a bathhouse. stream, his heart and soul filled with the desire to join them and discover the beauty of human contact. “Twenty-eight young men are bathing on the shore…twenty-eight years of a woman's life and all so lonely. Which of the young men does she prefer? … You splash around in the water there, but stay still in your room. Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, the others did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. An invisible hand also passed over their bodies, descending trembling from their temples and ribs” (Section 11). It is neither modest nor appropriate for a woman to bathe naked with a group of strange men. Playing on the human desire for sexual discovery, Whitman, however, ignores social and religious expectations of modesty and virtue, describing in detail the lonely woman's longing to simply have fun with the group of bathing men. Whitman attempts to expose women's "forbidden voices...of sex and lust" (Section 24), believing that sexual guilt and fear are harmful emotions, despite the stigma surrounding their public expression. Following his own convictions, Whitman seems to encourage women to forget societal expectations of modesty and to pursue their own path, forged from their own desire, sexual ambition and shy experience of life; he seems to encourage her to go into the water with the men, sharing not only her body but also her emotion and her desire for intimacy. Overall, openly discussing sex is, and was in Whitman's time, often considered taboo. Acting like an outcast though.