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In our small group this week, we talked about Whitmans' attempt to strip the reader down to their naked essence and make them one with the rest of the readers and with himself. I think it's possible that rather than creating oneness and a sense of communal spirit, this method of Whitman's actual serves to alienate the reader from the community.

Bertolt Brecht, a reknowned, crochety and fittingly melodramatic theater theorist claimed in his essay "A Short Organum to the Theater" that the best way to alienate an audience from a theatrical piece was to make generalizations, and to use characters and situations that had no particular life or personality of their own, but which were familiar stock figures, representatative rather than individual. I think a great deal of Whitman's assertions about the people mentioned and the scenarious described in his "leaves of grass" are very generalized, meant to be recognized and appreciated by the everyman. If his intention was to use this technique to bring the reader closer to them, there are some people who disagree about the effectiveness of the technique. I may be one of them. I haven't really decided yet.