Part 17 of “Song of Myself ,“ and elements of the surrounding cantos, exemplify, I think, Whitman’s approach to life, his worldview. Whitman sees himself defined by community and vice-versa.

Whitman sees the world or aspects thereof as composed of binaries that sometimes seem to somehow unify, or have potential to unify.  They are distinct yet unified. He sees himself carrying on an intellectual tradition just by recording “his thoughts,” since they are all the thoughts that every man has ever thought; and moreover, they belong to you as much as to him, since they are your thoughts as much as his.

The apparent contradictions of binaries never give Walt anxiety; rather, they give him comfort as the constitutive fabric of his conceptual cosmos.

Sort of how a quilt is composed of different patches, but each pieces has an essential quality of quilt-ness simply by dint of its inclusion, which reminds one of one’s status as an American-as divergent parts contributing to a national identity-, since Walt is an American to the utmost degree.  After enumerating a lengthy grouping of persons/workers and descriptions of their positions, he integrates himself among this vocational list; he is all jobs, or at least “more or less” has components of them, and they --Walt, the jobs, and the people who perform them-- tend toward each other.

Communally, in Whitman’s perspective, we are granted meaning by granting meaning: our part in the/as the whole justifies not only ourselves, but also the community at large.

“…in all people I see myself, none more and not a barley-corn less.”