Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier

The section “Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier” from Specimen Days left an indelible impression on me and certainly crystalizes Whitman’s opposition to the Civil War. The prose is elegiac and powerful as Whitman attempts to represent the deaths of thousands of soldiers through the hypothetical death of a single soldier:

“…the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands,) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny tuft, on receiving his death-shot -- there sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass and soil, with red blood -- the battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by -- and there, haply with pain and suffering (yet less, far less, than is supposed,) the last lethargy winds like a serpent round him -- the eyes glaze in death…”

There are a number of themes regarding the definition and actions of a “hero” from Song of Myself that I see repeated here in this short section of Specimen Days. Whitman consistently seeks to remind his readers that most acts of heroism go unknown or unnoticed. The opening lines of this section of Specimen Days (“thousands, north and south, of unwrit heroes, unknown heroisms, incredible, impromptu, first-class desperations -- who tells? No history ever…”) remind me of the “unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known” that Whitman speaks of in Song of Myself. Interestingly, in Whitman’s moments of expanded consciousness in Song of Myself, he joins several heroes in dire circumstances including the skipper of a sinking ship who provides comfort to his doomed passengers to the end. This leads me to a second theme regarding heroism that Whitman comes back to repeatedly: the heroic equality of the person who fails in his opposition to that which he opposes with that of the person who succeeds. Both are heroes in Whitman’s mind as both have chosen to stand against something they view as wrong – the outcome of their opposition is ultimately irrelevant. It is the act of standing up that is important. Whitman asks: “Have you heard that is was good to gain the day? I say it is also good to fall…. battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won."