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Teachers' Resource Web Study Questions on Walt Whitman "The learn'd astronomer"; "The
Death of Abraham Lincoln" 1 When I heard the learn'd astronomer, For the first group You know the five journalistic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Help us with the first four--we'll leave the "why" (the poem's purpose) to other groups. So: Who is the speaker? (What kind of person, from what walk of life?) What was he doing during the event he now describes? Where was he? When was he there? For the second group How would you say astronomers generally understand and describe the stars? What specific words and phrases does the speaker use to characterize that way of understanding the stars? If you find the speaker's descriptive phrases in lines 1-4 "loaded," say how. For the third group What effect does the astronomer's lecture have upon the speaker? Concentrate on the last four lines, beginning "How soon . . . ." Go beyond the obvious, which is that the speaker doesn't like the lecture and so he leaves. How exactly does he seem to feel, and how exactly does he describe his departure from the room and his subsequent actions? For the fourth group You've been appointed the class philosophers for a day. (Don't fret; it's at least marginally better than being the court jester.) Contrast the differing ideas about human nature held by the scientist in the poem and the speaker, respectively. The question perhaps boils down to this: what kind of "knowledge" most satisfies human beings? What, according to Whitman, do they need to know or feel when they look at the stars? For the fifth group You've been appointed the class romantics for a day. Now then, a cynic might say, isn't Whitman himself, as a poet, doing what the astronomer did--isn't he using mere words to lecture us about the stars? And we thought the speaker implied that silence--not words or charts--was the only proper comeback to the scientific view! Help! Can you make Whitman's case that poetic words offer a better way of understanding ourselves and the natural world than does science? Possible paper topic for this poem: Use specific words, phrases, and sentences in the poem to make the speaker's case that there are two ways of "understanding" or relating to the universe and that his way is better than the one offered by scientific demonstration and study. Then address whether he is being fair to the range of motives behind scientific endeavor. Suggestions: 1) Some basic contrasts would help you establish your argument: contrast the "learn'd astronomer's" way of pointing to or describing the stars with the speaker's drastically different way of characterizing and relating to or pointing to the stars. 2) Pay attention to the different effects the two ways of knowing the stars have upon the speaker. 3) Contrast the differing ideas about "human nature" that must be held by the scientist in the poem (along with those in the lecture hall who applaud him) and the speaker, respectively. Another Paper Topic: 1. The poet is bound to use words (signs) to convey the meaning he wants us to get from our reading of the poem, which allies him uncomfortably with the scientist who has to use a medium (charts, graphs, and so forth) to convey his knowledge of the stars. Nonetheless, Whitman insists that poetry is better than scientific demonstration. Why? "The Death of Abraham Lincoln," 1882. (Norton Reader) 1) What scene does Whitman reminisce about from pages 779 through 781 top? How does he characterize the public's attitude toward the new president? Why do you think he's chosen to offer this characterization in an essay about the death of Lincoln? 2) Even when Whitman shifts to the theme of the assassination, how does he build suspense from pages 781-82 toward the deed of conspirator John Wilkes Booth? 3) On page 783, how does Whitman succeed in conveying the onlookers' horror and confusion at the moment of the President's murder? What techniques does he use? 4) Lincoln was visible in his private theater box, watching the British comedy Our American Cousin, when Booth shot him and then jumped down to the stage, declaiming, "Sic semper tyrannis!" ("Thus always to tyrants!"—the words spoken by the conspirators who killed Julius Caesar in 44 BCE). Lincoln enjoyed the theater, and the southerner Booth was the brother of the famous actor Edwin Booth. How does Whitman's description of the event from pages 782-85 sound like something from a play? Why would he want to make the president's murder seem like a scene from a play? 5) According to Whitman, what is the ultimate value to contemporary and future Americans of President Lincoln's violent, untimely death? In what sense, according to Whitman, did Lincoln's assassination transform the meaning of the Civil War that was just then ending?
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