Scrolling through Walt Whitman's journal, I noticed a few things about the structure and the content of the journal and had a major difficulty deciphering his handwriting.  The structure of the journal is extremely informal and consists of a mostly questions and brief ideas concerning these questions.  The journal often writes several questions in a row and then moves on to give brief ideas about how to answer these questions using examples.  Whitman also writes several stanzas of a poem about questions written but most seem incomplete.  He includes drawings of characters and things that I think are either inspiration for a poem or someone he has seen using much more detail and care than the writing in the journal. This journal seems to me like a collection of ideas about questions Whitman has pertaining to everyday occurrences and how they could be turned into poems.

In this journal, Whitman expresses his concerns about the world and his opinions on how it can change through his ideas for poems and the questions that he asks.  This reveals that Whitman is a person who cares about the world around him and notices the larger themes and troubles of everyday life that escape most people.  The questions asked in the journal talk about themes that apply to the people of the time period and potentially in the future.  This shows that Whitman is a writer who believes that change can happen in the world and aims to enlighten people through his work about problems that affect the people.

One part of the journal that stuck out to me was the idea about the ship.  Whitman wrote, "Welcome the storm- welcome the trial- let the waves why how I shall see what old ship is made of" (Whitman 7).  He then goes on to say that the ship is the "ship of the world- ship of humanity- ship of the ages- ship that connects the world- ship of the hope of the world- ship of promise" (Whitman 10).  This idea about the ship stood out to me because it is the epitome of the purpose of Whitman's Leaves of Grass in that it aims to connect people and to raise questions about society.  Whitman uses a metaphor of a ship in order to draw a connection of humanity and hope between people to talk about hardship.  I think that it is extremely effective to unite the readers in order to encourage a purpose and Whitman's ideas show this.

After reading the annotations, I have a different perspective on what the meaning of the metaphor of the ship is.  At first I thought it was the hardships of the people but now I can understand how it can be representative of the government under Lincoln's Presidency.  I find it interesting how Whitman made up a dialogue between Lincoln and him and continually referenced Lincoln throughout the journal.  Creating a dialogue between two people gave Whitman a lot of writer's freedom on the persona that Lincoln could have and I think it is important on how Whitman represented Lincoln.  Lincoln being seen in an honorable yet distant manner is consistent with his Presidency but I think that Whitman had an appreciatory tone towards Lincoln.  Whitman also used this dialogue to bring up problems within the government and to comment on the fracture of America during the civil war.