WALT WHITMAN Walt Whitman was born in the early 1800s and lived during a period of great uncertainty in the United States. The nation was fairly young, and still in search of solutions to many of it's existing problems. First and foremost of these problems was slavery. Whitman, though, received little formal education, so most of the standard teachings of the state were unknown to him. He began working at only eleven years old, holding …showed first 75 words of 1141 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1141 total…grave, Lying, Lying, cold in my grave. The reason -My reason Take my head off this terror. The fearing won't come back. I can't see. My mind's all wiped clean..." These mixed views on death show the same thing that Whitman's did, that no one really knows the truth, and that death remains a mystery unsolved to us until we meet it. And once we do, how do we tell everyone else what we conclude?