Discussion on Whitman's “The Sleepers”

•  Starting at line 60, Whitman seems to offer us a classic anxiety dream: the speaker finds himself in public without clothes. Why? What is the effect of this dream and how does it relate to what has come before and what comes after?

•  In Section 2, the speaker is in a grave. What is the effect of this movement from a dream of nakedness to a dream of being buried?

•  Whitman begins a series of dramatic incidents with Section 3, where a giant naked swimmer drowns. How do you react to this scene? How does it relate to other parts of the poem?

•  What do you make of Section 4? What is happening here?

•  Read through Sections 5 and 6. How do they relate to Sections 3 and 4? Here, much like in the sections of "Song of Myself" that we discussed, Whitman moves through strangely related scenes. Here, he moves from General George Washington saying goodbye to his troops in the Revolutionary War, then moves to a memory of an Indian woman visiting Whitman's mother, then to a slave called "Lucifer" who speaks his resentment and pledge of revenge. What do you make of the movement of the poem through those three scenes? How do they relate to each other? What is the effect of the movement from naked swimmer to the dead in battle to General Washington saying goodbye to his troops to a “red squaw” to “Lucifer” speaking his rage against his master?

•  Whitman ends the poem with some long catalogs of images. How would you describe these images? Do they begin to form a pattern? Do some of the images call you back to images earlier in the poem? Toward what conclusion does Whitman work here? What are the implications of a world bound in sleep and dreams?

Below is an early draft of the Lucifer section. What has Whitman done to change things in the final draft? How is the final draft different from this earlier draft? What is the effect of the poet's voice slipping into the mouth of the slave, speaking as the slave rather than for the slave? Compare this draft to the section of “Song of Myself” (p. 65) where the poet suddenly becomes the “hounded slave”: how is this different from the “Lucifer” section of “The Sleepers”?

 

I am a curse: a negro thinks me;

You cannot speak for yourself, negro;

I lend him my own tongue;

I dart like a snake from your mouth.

My eyes are bloodshot, they look down the river,

A steamboat paddles away my woman and children.