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First of all, I think I understand why a lot of people don’t like Whitman. D.H Lawrence had a point when he said that at some points, Whitman was trying to force himself onto your soul by merging with it. I guess I never took him that seriously and just wanted to take the overall idea of his work: enjoy yourself, your life, and everything around you.

I appreciate the representation of the unconscious.  I have never thought about the unconscious very much, so maybe that’s why I appreciate it when I see a representation of it. I admire people can delve into that part of themselves and extract something from it, whether it has a meaning or not. However, I prefer works of the unconscious where the reader can interpret it however he or she wants. An example of such a work would be Beckett’s Waiting For Godot – as we discussed in class on Thursday, the play is about nothing or whatever you want it to be about. They seem to be more fun to work with.

To me, the consciousness can act as a filter of the unconsciousness. Consciousness is aware of the environment around the person as well as the culture of that environment that it must adhere to. So it can hide certain things from the world that the unconsciousness produces because it may not follow the rules of culture or social norms. This is where some vivid imagination can come from. The consciousness can hide some of the “true” you, a super personal part of you. Sometimes getting in touch with your unconsciousness can help you get to know more about yourself.

Since the emergence of consciousness helped the evolution of culture in significant ways, maybe thapping into our unconsciousness can help cultural evolution as well? I never thought of unconsciousness helping cultural evolution but I guess it can be a possibility.