17 pages • 34 minutes read
Walt WhitmanVigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1865A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Death is Not the End
Whitman indicates the wounding of the speaker’s comrade in Line 2 when he “dropt at my side that day.” The fellow soldier lingers but for a final moment to pass between them: “One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget, / One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground” (Lines 3-4). With this, the “boy” expires and the speaker goes back to battle. When he returns, the speaker knows that “never again on earth” will his friend return his kisses (Line 7)—a phrase he repeats in Line 23, emphasizing his awareness that his comrade has truly gone.
But death is not the end, as the speaker insists in Line 17: “I think we shall surely meet again.” This statement, which is more directly expressed than the sentiments throughout poem, provides a turning point as it not only offers consolation but allows the speaker to perform the duty of burying his friend “where he fell” (Line 26). Though it is part of a longer parenthetical that can be viewed as an aside within the poem’s dramatic monologue structure, combined with the repeated one mentioned above (Lines 7 and 23), this shows the speaker has a grasp on the seriousness of death, in keeping with his role in the American Civil War, where he surely experienced many such loses. However, in keeping with the close relationship between the speaker and his comrade, it also reinforces his belief that a new life will begin once one’s earthly body departs.
Love Between Men
This poem is most explicitly a depiction of the abiding love between two men, forged in battle. In referring to the dead soldier as “my son and my comrade” in Line 3, the speaker establishes the nearly familial relationship between the pair that led early scholars to assume the men were father and son. In contrast to this notion, Jimmie Killingsworth, author of The Cambridge Introduction to Walt Whitman, asserts: “Perhaps the best way to read the line is to say that the love he feels for the boy is so complete as to defy the available categories of fatherly and brotherly love, approaching the erotic” (61). Killingsworth adopts the conventional reading of the poem: These two men are so close if they are not lovers, the bond between them is at least as strong as is possible between platonic friends. Such a belief is consistent with the historical context above, which explains that the men whose story inspired the poem shared a last name to symbolize their connection.
The speaker and his friend, his “brave boy” (Line 16), were close enough to share kisses in life and a final tender moment in death. Whitman emphasizes the affectionate nature of their relationship by describing the speaker’s vigil as “wondrous” and “sweet” (Line 10), as he passes “sweet hours” (Line 13) while the night “linger[s]” (Line 18) as their kisses had. The speaker narrates his ministrations in detail, emphasizing the care with which he treats his close friend’s body: “My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form, / Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet” (Line 19). The repetition of “carefully” further symbolizes the tenderness between the men.
Consolations in Nature
Though this scene occurs on a battlefield, Whitman portrays none of the ravages of war in the poem. The speaker “burie[s his friend] where he fell” (Line 26), yet no other wounded or dead are mentioned. Instead, when he returns at the battle’s end, he finds “your face in the starlight, curious scene” (Line 8). Curious scene, indeed. Such lush description continues two lines later when he notices “the fragrant, silent night” (Line 10). Later, still, he passes “sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours […] As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole” (Line 12 and 15).
On the one hand, the speaker is so fixated on his vigil for his fallen comrade that he is unaware of the men around him, but on the other, he is aware enough of his surroundings to remark upon their beauty. He remains in this position until “day brighten’d” and he “rose from the chill ground” (Line 25). The final words imply the discomfort the speaker previously ignored as he stuck with his vigil. Still, the consolation of the beauty around him must also have served as a balm in this saddest of moments.
Related Titles
By Walt Whitman
