Leaves of Grass · Chapter
Chapter 37: The Prisoner's Lament explained
The narrator embodies the suffering of prisoners, outcasts, and the sick, experiencing their pain and confinement as his own, blurring the line between self and other.
What happens
The narrator embodies the suffering of prisoners, outcasts, and the sick, experiencing their pain and confinement as his own, blurring the line between self and other.
Themes in this chapter
Comradeship and Love
The narrator's radical empathy and unity with the suffering, feeling their pain as his own.
Individuality and Self
The self expands to include the marginalized and oppressed, questioning the boundaries of identity.
Characters to notice
- Narrator
The narrator identifies with prisoners, mutineers, and cholera patients, feeling their pain and shame.
Key passages
“I am possess’d! Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering, See myself in prison shaped like another man, And feel the dull unintermitted pain.”
I am overwhelmed, taking on the forms of all outlaws and sufferers, seeing myself imprisoned as another person, and enduring their constant pain.
The narrator claims to embody the experiences of the marginalized.
“Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d to him and walk by his side”
Every mutineer led to jail in handcuffs is accompanied by me, also handcuffed and walking beside him.
The narrator shares the physical and emotional burden of the prisoner.
“Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp, My face is ash-color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.”
Every cholera patient dying is me dying too, my face pale, my muscles contorted, and people shun me.
The narrator experiences the final moments of a cholera victim, including social rejection.