I Sing the Body Electric

Electricity is a symbol for life and movement. Corruption is what happens when a body dies, decays, and begins to rot. It is the opposite of “the body electric” (Line 1). The two are binaries.

The primary goal of Walt Whitman’s poem is to sing about the alive body—charged with electricity, full of vitality, and brimming with life force to engage in wholesome, democratic, nation-building activities. He writes in Section 1 that his aim is to “discorrupt” (Line 4) the bodies, insinuating that bodies in America are in danger of being, or are in the process of being corrupted. The poem is meant to turn bodies that may rot into bodies that continue to reproduce with the charge of life.

The speaker asks, “Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? / And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?” (Lines 5-6). In this context, the term “corruption” refers to slavery or any act in which a person inhibits another’s ability to express their soul through the body. Those who interrupt the life force of other bodies also corrupt themselves. Those who defile the bodies of others also defile that person’s soul and subsequently their own souls.