Out from Behind This Mask Review
Out From Behind This Mask
By: Walt Whitman
• Synopsis In Whitman’s poem Out From Behind This Mask, the poem starts out by talking about the passion and excitement that to many, lies just out of reach. Whitman is trying to illustrate how this ecstasy is much closer than once thought, by comparing the barrier as a curtain or a mask. The wonders that lie beyond this mask range from “passionate teeming plays” to “the glaze of God’s serenest, purest sky.” To Whitman, the possibilities are endless. In the first line, “Out from behind this bending, rough-cut mask”, Walt Whitman establishes that this poem has a personalized message for each reader with the “rough-cut mask” symbolizing everyone’s outside appearance (or face). The third and fourth lines establish the unity of each person’s own life. Line 6 describes how the face can guise what the heart feels and lines 7-10 explains that the face can express beauty and ugliness as well as being a “limitless small continent” (showing unfathomable amounts of features in a condensed area). Whitman then expresses that the face is more distinct than any planet (or other body) and that our lives revolve around ‘the face’. In line 17, the first connection between universes (or faces) is made by sight, “These burned eyes”. Whitman then proceeds to express how this “look” is such a unlikely occurrence, almost a miracle by odds. The “look” is the refined to a glance between two passing people. He states that this ‘glance’ can occur anywhere and that at the moment your eyes meet, your souls are one for an instant. As the poem progresses, Walt then defines freedom, by comparing it to astrological articles. Freedom is more delicate than the sun or the moon, or any of the planets (Jupiter, Venus, Mars), and it is as condense as the universe. Mr. Whitman then not only creates a shift in the poem through words, but through punctuation as well. “To launch and spin through space, revolving, sideling, from these to emanate
By: Walt Whitman
• Synopsis In Whitman’s poem Out From Behind This Mask, the poem starts out by talking about the passion and excitement that to many, lies just out of reach. Whitman is trying to illustrate how this ecstasy is much closer than once thought, by comparing the barrier as a curtain or a mask. The wonders that lie beyond this mask range from “passionate teeming plays” to “the glaze of God’s serenest, purest sky.” To Whitman, the possibilities are endless. In the first line, “Out from behind this bending, rough-cut mask”, Walt Whitman establishes that this poem has a personalized message for each reader with the “rough-cut mask” symbolizing everyone’s outside appearance (or face). The third and fourth lines establish the unity of each person’s own life. Line 6 describes how the face can guise what the heart feels and lines 7-10 explains that the face can express beauty and ugliness as well as being a “limitless small continent” (showing unfathomable amounts of features in a condensed area). Whitman then expresses that the face is more distinct than any planet (or other body) and that our lives revolve around ‘the face’. In line 17, the first connection between universes (or faces) is made by sight, “These burned eyes”. Whitman then proceeds to express how this “look” is such a unlikely occurrence, almost a miracle by odds. The “look” is the refined to a glance between two passing people. He states that this ‘glance’ can occur anywhere and that at the moment your eyes meet, your souls are one for an instant. As the poem progresses, Walt then defines freedom, by comparing it to astrological articles. Freedom is more delicate than the sun or the moon, or any of the planets (Jupiter, Venus, Mars), and it is as condense as the universe. Mr. Whitman then not only creates a shift in the poem through words, but through punctuation as well. “To launch and spin through space, revolving, sideling, from these to emanate