Assignment 2

“I’m nobody! Who are you?” By Emily Dickinson

This poem impressed me. It begins like a dialogue between “nobodies”, the outcasts that
don’t make noises and fuss around. She likes to be a nobody and she is addressing to a
nobody because only this kind of people would understand how she feels about this. She and
the other “nobodies” are kind of laughing about the other category of people, the somebodies,
who will never have a private life and will never understand how precious being nobody is. I
like how friendly and open she is with the verse “Then there’s a pair of us” because it
immediately made me think about having a conversation with a friend and I told her that I
don’t like chocolate and then she tells me that she doesn’t like chocolate either and now we
have something in common and we’re a pair, a group of “nobodies” who don’t like chocolate
even though almost everybody likes chocolate, just like almost everybody wants to be a
somebody and you don’t really find people who are nobodies and accept and likes being this
way, not trying to “make a name” in society, just like you don’t see people who don’t eat
chocolate. She is making fun of those people who struggle and jump around like a frog to
drawn attention of the bog. This part made me think that the bog is in her vision the mass of
people that must be always impressed and always entertained.
In conclusion this poem makes the readers accept and embrace having a private life, showing
the benefits of it.

“To a common prostitute” By Walt Whitman

I think that in this poem, Walt Whitman expects from a prostitute to treat him like a lover, a
husband. She has to be worthy of him, to make him feel loved because he somehow promises
to love her by not excluding her and telling her beautiful words. She must be prepared for
him, to be perfect because he is someone important by the way he introduced himself with
confidence in the beginning “I’m Walt Whitman” and he encourage her to be as confident and
relaxed as he is “be at ease with me”, making me think that even though she is a prostitute, he
is treating her as his equal, his partner which impressed me. I think that even though he is
very confident throughout the poem, in the last verse he shows his true colours because he is
afraid of being forgotten by someone so common and small as a stripper.
In conclusion I think that he is trying to find love, to find something real in a sexual fantasy
with a prostitute, seeking some kind of validation that he is someone who is worth not being
forgotten.