Freedom

"I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer grass."- Walt Whitman
           This is a representation of pure freedom in Whitman's world. He is not confined to the world of duty, but rather the world of pleasure. The word loaf means to be relaxed, calm, lazy, not thinking; if one is loafing, they are not bound to obligation, but free to express themselves in anyway they want. I think it is important to pay attention to the fact that Whitman has such an affinity to nature and that we see freedom being expressed in its most pure forms. Modernity is represented negatively because it is associated with duty, when one performs their duties they are not free. To loaf in the grass examining grass you are free to let your mind wander into places it may not have been able to do in the hustle o the world of modernity.

"[...] its scathing denunciations of slaveholders--its faithful exposures of slavery--and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution--"- Frederick Douglass
          Douglass has been in a free state for four months; however, he has not quite obtained full freedom from slavery. It is only by making his own living away from the white man, depending upon himself is he truly free.  There is a difference between a slave in form and a slave in fact. To be a slave in form one is trapped as a physical slave where slave in fact refers to the mentality of being a slave. He begins to use reading and writing,

 skills the white man never wanted him to obtain, to express himself, to earn a living. The irony of this cannot be lost on the reader, that the one thing that the white man feared he would gain and use against him, he does. 

Even though Douglass has been physically free, it is not till he is dependent on himself; exercising the skills of reading writing that he becomes a free man in form and fact

"I heard a fly buzz-- when I died --"- Emily Dickinson

        Emily Dickinson's sense of freedom is twisted and trapped compared to that of Douglass or Whitman. Instead of taking action like Douglass does she write her poems of her wish to embrace death.  She uses the freedom of writing, that Douglass strives for, to try and  escape life where he uses it to make life better and bring awareness to his cause. Dickinson seems trapped by life and instead of the sense of freedom there is an enclosing sense of closter phobia. In reference to Whitman Dickinson is more domestic, she is a woman that is writing in a time where it was not as accepted as it is today. This in itself is liberating; however, it is still a domestic and enclosed feeling. The act of Dickinson's writing is free, but the content of her writing is the exact opposite, it is constraining.