Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps: Shifting Attitude towards the Civil War

Abstract

Abstract

Walt Whitman was completely disgusted by the social and political condition of Pre Civil War America, and his Drum Taps provides an alternative vision of an America ruled by a wave of comradely relationship. However, the poems in Drum Taps provide a shifting attitude towards the Civil War, which is undoubtedly influenced by Whitman’s own war experience. Whereas the initial section welcomes the terrible war, the middle section turns to depict the violence of the war, and the last section focuses on the reconciliation to the cost of the war and the comradeship among the soldiers; this shifting attitude towards the war is the direct outcome of Whitman’s experience in the war hospitals. He believes that the soldiers, transformed by the war experience, will help to build a more egalitarian and democratic society, which he has long been dreaming for.