Most people have had a life-changing teacher whose influence cannot be overstated. The best teachers, however, are not always found in school but are instead often found outside of the traditional learning environment. The poems "Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed and "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman give the reader insight into what constitutes true teaching, true learning, and a real education. The speakers in both of these poems find their conventional teachers mundane and derive their real education from nature and personal introspection. Both poems implicitly encourage the reader to find a real education outside of the customary method. Through diction and syntax, tone, and contrast, both poems address the issues of domination by teachers to attempt to force traditional learning and the resistance of students to accept learning in this traditional fashion.
Both Reed and Whitman use diction and syntax to comment on education in their poetry. Reed depicts what true learning is through diction and syntax in "Naming of Parts." Many phrases in this poem have both denotations and connotations. The name of the poem itself denotes the austere nature of the parts of the guns that are described in the poem. The poem begins each stanza with exactly what the military teacher is teaching regarding the parts of a gun, and his words are uncreative and uninteresting. At the end of each stanza, however, the narrator repeats phrases but attributes different meanings to the phrases. In contrast to the teacher's tedious words, the words used by the internal voice of the student are beautiful and utilize various literary techniques. For example, Reed uses the simile that the flower in the garden "glistens like coral" (5). Similarly, Reed begins the second stanza with a mundane description of another part of the gun but ends the stanza with the "silent, eloquent gestures" (11), creating personification of the trees. Reed also uses repetition of phrases. After a dull description of how to ease the spring of a gun, he repeats a similar phrase, but in relation to the bees pollinating the flowers, "They call it easing the Spring" (24). In this way, he uses two definitions of the word "Spring" to connote two different meanings.
Similar to Reed's use of diction and syntax, Whitman also uses these literary techniques to provide commentary on teaching and learning. "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains a total of only eighty-three words, but the words have many denotations and connotations. For example, if Whitman had intended the adjective "learn'd" to be a respected one, he would have used the word "educated" or "knowledgeable" when referring to the astronomer. Instead, the word "learn'd" connotes a tone of skepticism towards the astronomer. Similarly, the student claims that he "heard" the astronomer. But the implication again is that while he may have heard the words of the teacher, he only learned from these words in that they opened the door for more intuitive thinking. The "proofs" provided by the astronomer also give a sarcastic connotation. The word leaves the reader wondering what, if anything, was proven. In contrast to this sarcastic connotation of "proof," when the student walks out, Whitman describes the student as "rising and gliding" (6), giving an uplifting connotation and even implying that he rises above the teacher. When the student goes outside, there is not just silence, but "perfect silence" (8), as if again, nature is the better teacher. The last word of the poem is "stars." The astronomer talks on and on, but never actually mentions the true subject -- the stars. The diction and syntax with Whitman's last word is direct, suggesting that it is nature who is the true teacher.
In addition to the use of diction and syntax, both Reed and Whitman use the tone of the speaker to convey their ideas about what constitutes true teaching and learning. In "Naming of Parts," the tone of the speaker is conveyed through two obvious speakers. The first speaker is the teacher who names of the parts of a gun. The teacher's words, such as "lower sling swivel" and "bolt," are monotonous, long-winded, and even cold. They simply name the actual parts of an inanimate and unfeeling object, a weapon. In one case, the speaker actually refers to the "safety-catch"; perhaps Reed intentionally chose this word based on the fact that the root word of "safety-catch" is "safe." In contrast to the voice of the teacher in "Naming of Parts" is the voice of the student. The voice of the student appears to be an internal voice, as if the student is daydreaming of a more idyllic place. The teacher's words ring in the student's ear, allowing him to think of other locations where the words might apply but in totally different ways. Perhaps there is even a third implied voice in the poem, which is the voice of nature. Nature does speak figuratively in the poem through its gardens and bees. The differences among these three voices provide an overall effect for the reader that implies that the information the teacher is espousing regarding guns is unexciting compared to the beauty and teaching of life and nature.
The tone of the speaker in "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" also provides commentary on true teaching and learning. The actual narrator of the poem is the student, but the student describes the astronomer in a sarcastic tone. The implied voice of the astronomer is educated, but not necessarily wise. Similar to the teacher in "Naming of Parts," the astronomer is boring; he presents his information in "charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure" (3). In fact, the astronomer is so mind-numbing that the student actually walks out of the lecture hall. The tone of the speaker insinuates that he finds true learning not from the astronomer, but instead from nature and inward contemplation, as he "looked up in perfect silence at the stars" (8).
While diction, syntax, and tone are important elements in these poems, the most important way that both Reed and Whitman convey the theme of true teaching and learning is with the overall use of contrast. In "Naming of Parts," guns are contrasted with flowers, teachers are contrasted with bees, weapons of death are contrasted with the life of nature, and austere military equipment is contrasted with descriptions of nature as "fragile" (17) and "eloquent" (11). The narrator notes that "the early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers" (23), which would seem like a strange description of a bee's behavior, if it were not in contrast to the military men "fumbling" with how to learn the parts of their "assault" weapon. Overall, the contrast in the poem speaks to the issue of what is being taught by the teacher versus what is being learned by the student. The speaker repeats a particularly odd phrase, that the students "have not got" various parts of a gun (10 and 28); in addition, they "have not got" the "silent eloquent gestures" of the garden (12). The contrast of these deficiencies of what they "have not got" highlights the difference between the information that is being taught by the traditional teacher and the information being taught by the real teacher, nature.
Whitman also highlights the theme of traditional teaching versus real learning through contrast in "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." The audience in the poem responds to the astronomer with "much applause" (4), which is contrasted with the narrator's own feelings of negativity towards the lecturer. Similarly, the word "unaccountable" (5) typically means inexplicable, but can be contrasted with another meaning of not being responsible for one's actions, leaving the narrator free to dismiss the astronomer's words and exit the classroom. When the narrator does leave, he is "tired and sick" (5), but there is an obvious contrast between being physically sick and only mentally sick of this traditional form of teaching. Finally, in contrast to the traditional education from the lecturer, the real education comes when the narrator exits into the "mystical moist night-air" (7).
In each of Reed and Whitman's poems, the narrator is subjected to a teacher that he finds mundane, the narrator is compelled to find another teacher, and the narrator finds that teacher in nature. The narrator in "Naming of Parts" finds his education in "the almond-blossom / Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards" (lines 28-29). The narrator in "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" finds his education when he looks "up in perfect silence at the stars" (8). Through these two poems, Reed and Whitman use diction and syntax, tone, and contrast, to address the theme of what constitutes a real education. Both poets urge the reader to look outside the traditional realm of teaching to find his own teacher and his own education.
Works Cited
Reed, Henry. "Naming of Parts." Making Arguments about Literature, A Compact Guide and Anthology. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005. 331. Print.
Whitman, Walt. "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." Making Arguments about Literature, A Compact Guide and Anthology. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005. 333. Print.
Contributors Note: Chelsea Foulke is a senior at Mammoth High School and a concurrent Cerro Coso student who would like to transfer to UC Berkeley and major in pre-med/pre-vet. She enjoyed writing about literature in both English 101 and English 102 at Cerro Coso. This was a piece she wrote for English 102.
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