Respondez!
RESPONDEZ! Respondez!
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;)
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade!
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking?
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind! and let that which was behind advance to the
front and
speak;
Let murderers, bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions!
Let the old propositions be postponed!
Let faces and theories be turn’d inside out! let meanings be freely criminal, as well
as
results!
Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of drudgery!
Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know your destination?)
Let men and women be mock’d with bodies and mock’d with Souls!
Let the love that waits in them, wait! let it die, or pass stillborn to other spheres!
Let the sympathy that waits in every man, wait! or let it also pass, a dwarf, to other
spheres!
Let contradictions prevail! let one thing contradict another! and let one line of my poems
contradict another!
Let the people sprawl with yearning, aimless hands! let their tongues be broken! let their
eyes
be discouraged! let none descend into their hearts with the fresh lusciousness of love!
(Stifled, O days! O lands! in every public and private corruption!
Smother’d in thievery, impotence, shamelessness, mountain-high;
Brazen effrontery, scheming, rolling like ocean’s waves around and upon you, O my
days! my
lands!
For not even those thunderstorms, nor fiercest lightnings of the war, have purified the
atmosphere;)
—Let the theory of America still be management, caste, comparison! (Say! what other
theory
would you?)
Let them that distrust birth and death still lead the rest! (Say! why shall they not lead
you?)
Let the crust of hell be neared and trod on! let the days be darker than the nights! let
slumber bring less slumber than waking time brings!
Let the world never appear to him or her for whom it was all made!
Let the heart of the young man still exile itself from the heart of the old man! and let
the
heart of the old man be exiled from that of the young man!
Let the sun and moon go! let scenery take the applause of the audience! let there be
apathy
under the stars!
Let freedom prove no man’s inalienable right! every one who can tyrannize, let him
tyrannize to his satisfaction!
Let none but infidels be countenanced!
Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm, hate, greed, indecency, impotence, lust,
be
taken for granted above all! let writers, judges, governments, households, religions,
philosophies, take such for granted above all!
Let the worst men beget children out of the worst women!
Let the priest still play at immortality!
Let death be inaugurated!
Let nothing remain but the ashes of teachers, artists, moralists, lawyers, and
learn’d and
polite persons!
Let him who is without my poems be assassinated!
Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee—let the mudfish, the lobster, the
mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and the grunting pig-fish—let these, and the like of
these, be
put on a perfect equality with man and woman!
Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of those who have died of the
most
filthy of diseases!
Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none but fools!
Let men among themselves talk and think forever obscenely of women! and let women among
themselves talk and think obscenely of men!
Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in public, naked, monthly, at the peril of our
lives! let our bodies be freely handled and examined by whoever chooses!
Let nothing but copies at second hand be permitted to exist upon the earth!
Let the earth desert God, nor let there ever henceforth be mention’d the name of God!
Let there be no God!
Let there be money, business, imports, exports, custom, authority, precedents, pallor,
dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, unbelief!
Let judges and criminals be transposed! let the prison-keepers be put in prison! let those
that
were prisoners take the keys! Say! why might they not just as well be transposed?)
Let the slaves be masters! let the masters become slaves!
Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling! let an idiot or
insane person appear on each of the stands!
Let the Asiatic, the African, the European, the American, and the Australian, go armed
against
the murderous stealthiness of each other! let them sleep armed! let none believe in good
will!
Let there be no unfashionable wisdom! let such be scorn’d and derided off from the
earth!
Let a floating cloud in the sky—let a wave of the sea—let growing mint, spinach,
onions, tomatoes—let these be exhibited as shows, at a great price for admission!
Let all the men of These States stand aside for a few smouchers! let the few seize on what
they
choose! let the rest gawk, giggle, starve, obey!
Let shadows be furnish’d with genitals! let substances be deprived of their genitals!
Let there be wealthy and immense cities—but still through any of them, not a single
poet,
savior, knower, lover!
Let the infidels of These States laugh all faith away!
If one man be found who has faith, let the rest set upon him!
Let them affright faith! let them destroy the power of breeding faith!
Let the she-harlots and the he-harlots be prudent! let them dance on, while seeming lasts!
(O
seeming! seeming! seeming!)
Let the preachers recite creeds! let them still teach only what they have been taught!
Let insanity still have charge of sanity!
Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers, clouds!
Let the daub’d portraits of heroes supersede heroes!
Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself!
Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after consumptive and genteel persons!
Let the white person again tread the black person under his heel! (Say! which is trodden
under
heel, after all?)
Let the reflections of the things of the world be studied in mirrors! let the things
themselves
still continue unstudied!
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself!
Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself!
(What real happiness have you had one single hour through your whole life?)
Let the limited years of life do nothing for the limitless years of death! (What do you
suppose
death will do, then?)
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
Whitman's poem takes the form of a fierce public outcry, built almost entirely from commands that turn ordinary civic ideals upside down. The opening announcement that the war is finished does not bring peace or relief; instead, it becomes the starting point for a bitter, unflinching exposure of what remains broken in society. The poem's voice is urgent, theatrical, and deliberately excessive, as if the only way to speak truth after war is to imitate chaos and let every hidden vice step forward and speak for itself.
As the poem moves from one denunciation to the next, it widens its scope from politics to religion, sexuality, class, race, and personal conduct. The speaker does not merely criticize corruption; he imagines a world in which corruption has become the organizing principle, and the result is a grim parody of civilization. That reversal gives the poem its central tension: the language sounds like a manifesto for disorder, yet its force comes from moral outrage and a deep longing to expose hypocrisy. Beneath the apparent descent into absurdity lies a demand for honesty, equality, and spiritual renewal by way of shock and contradiction.
Theme
- Social corruption - The poem catalogs the abuses of public and private life, showing a culture that has lost its moral center and normalized selfishness, deceit, and exploitation.
- Inversion and contradiction - Whitman repeatedly turns values inside out, using reversal to dramatize a world where right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and power and weakness have all been scrambled.
- Postwar disillusionment - Although the war has ended, the poem suggests that victory has not purified the nation, and the deeper sickness of society remains untouched.
- Equality and hierarchy - By imagining grotesque substitutions of masters and slaves, judges and prisoners, human beings and animals, the poem tests the boundaries of social rank and exposes how unstable those categories are.
- Hypocrisy in institutions - Religion, government, literature, and reform all come under attack because they often preserve appearances rather than justice or truth.
- Desire and self-knowledge - The poem insists that people look everywhere except within themselves, implying that real freedom depends on facing inner life instead of hiding behind roles and surfaces.
Literary Devices
- Anaphora - The repeated opening phrase gives the poem its driving rhythm and creates the effect of relentless public accusation.
- Imperative voice - The command form makes the poem sound like a distorted proclamation, sharpening its satirical energy and its sense of moral urgency.
- Irony - The speaker says what should not happen in order to condemn what does happen, so the poem's praise of disorder is really a harsh critique of disorderly society.
- Hyperbole - Extreme and shocking images intensify the poem's outrage, making corruption seem vast, contagious, and almost apocalyptic.
- Cataloguing - The long accumulation of examples creates momentum and breadth, suggesting that no part of life is exempt from the poem's scrutiny.
- Paradox - The poem repeatedly joins opposites, showing a world in which peace follows war only in name and moral language itself has become unstable.
- Rhetorical questions - Brief questions interrupt the flow and force the reader to confront the assumptions hidden behind social behavior and public values.
Symbolism
- The war - More than a military event, it represents a national crisis that fails to cleanse the deeper corruption of society.
- Faces turned inside out - This image suggests the exposure of hidden motives, false identities, and social masks.
- Slaves and masters - The reversal of these roles symbolizes the poem's attack on entrenched power and social hierarchy.
- Churches - They stand for institutional religion, which the poem treats as compromised, hollow, or unable to purify the world.
- Books - The replacement of living nature with books suggests the danger of secondhand thought and dead abstraction.
- The body - Repeated references to nakedness, examination, and sexuality make the body a symbol of exposure, vulnerability, and the need for truth without disguise.
Tone
Whitman's tone is savage, mocking, and openly confrontational, as if he is determined to offend complacency in order to force a reckoning. The mood for the reader is unsettled and claustrophobic, then increasingly grim, because the poem keeps widening its field of contamination until nearly every institution and ideal seems compromised. Even so, the energy is not passive despair; it is the kind of furious moral pressure that comes from a mind refusing to accept false peace.
Historical Context
Whitman wrote within the aftermath of the American Civil War, a period when hopes for national renewal collided with corruption, political tension, and uncertainty about democracy's future. His work often wrestles with the promise and failure of the United States, and this poem belongs to that larger struggle by imagining a nation that has survived war without becoming morally whole.
The poem also reflects nineteenth-century debates about class inequality, institutional religion, sexuality, and social reform. Whitman's free verse style and public, expansive voice fit the era's experiment with new American literary forms, while the poem's bluntness and reversals echo the period's sharpened anxieties about modernity, urban life, and the limits of inherited authority.