This poem does illustrate Christianity throughout the poem because I was getting the impression that he was talking about God throughout a majority of the poem and there is a lot of symbolism throughout the entire poem. I liked how he was talking about getting the kiss of his father, not in the literal sense, but in the fact that it is the spiritual father and that he is receiving the kiss of the holy spirit and is having life breathed into him. That is not from the literal sense that I am analyzing this, however, because if I were taking this poem literally, that would be a little awkward, although it would make some sense since Walt was apparently a homosexual.
Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those slender
windrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide.
That excerpt from the poem I also felt drawn too and able to relate to because I interpreted the symbolism in that the things left behind were what Jesus had left behind and the kind of impact he had left on his people, both good and bad. I got the impression, however, that Whitman was trying to relate to more of the tings that have been left behind, and are just going to be thrown aside.
Oh, baffled, lost,
Bent to the very earth, here preceding what follows,
Terrified with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now, that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not
once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my insolent poems the real me still stands untouched, untold,
altogether unreached,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written or shall
write,
Striking me with insults, till I fall helpless upon the sand!
I thought this to symbolize the stations of the cross and when Jesus is carrying the cross and falls to the ground, as Whitman says being struck with insults, he falls to the sand. Because, Jesus is insulted a lot throughout walking to be crucified, hence the symbolism in this poem.
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