SD: Inauguration Ball

INAUGURATION BALL

March 6. -- I have been up to look at the dance and supper-rooms, for the inauguration ball at the Patent office; and I could not help thinking, what a different scene they presented to my view a while since, fill'd with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war, brought in from second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburgh. To-night, beautiful women, perfumes, the violins' sweetness, the polka and the waltz; then the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy eye of the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of wounds and blood, and many a mother's son amid strangers, passing away untended there, (for the crowd of the badly hurt was great, and much for nurse to do, and much for surgeon.)

This entry is essentially focused around the severe contrast in usage of the rooms for the inauguration ball. Rooms that used to be filled with the injured, ill, and dying were not filled with dancing and music. Both are realities, one ugly and one beautiful, that occupy the same space like the two sides of a coin. To replace the wounded men are beautiful women; the screams and groans of the injured with violins; the odor of disease and death with perfume; the helpless stillness of the overcrowded rooms with waltzing and the polka.

In these contrasting ironies, there appears to be some contempt in Whitman's tone towards the abrupt change. When considering "Song of Myself", Whitman speaks of perfumes in the opening. Perfumes are artificial scents that cover up the natural smells that humans emit. So perhaps Whitman saw the inauguration ball as an insult to what the men had to endure. Whitman purposely describes the injured soldiers as "many a great mother's son amid strangers" to conjure up feelings of guilt for those who taken an impersonal stance against the suffering of the soldiers but show immense enthusiasm for a dance.