Question

Select the correct answer from each drop-down menu.

Read the excerpt from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman and complete the sentence that follows.

What has become of the young and old men?
And what has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.


In the excerpt Walt Whitman suggests______ that ________ because .

Answer 1

some remnant of human life continues to exist after death (D)

because the remains of the dead are absorbed into the soil and continue to nourish life (F)."

Step-by-step explanation:

Answer 2

Assuming the drop-down menu contained the following choices:

• First blank

A. human beings continue to exist after death in the form of souls

B. no remnant of human life can exist after death

C. human beings continue to exist after death through the people they knew

D. some remnant of human life continues to exist after death

• Second blank

E. the human soul is unchangeable and immortal

F. the remains of the dead are absorbed into the soil and continue to nourish life

G. the soul and consciousness continue to exist in other living beings

H. the human soul is not immortal in any way

The answer is: "Walt Whitman suggests that some remnant of human life continues to exist after death (D) because the remains of the dead are absorbed into the soil and continue to nourish life (F)."

In this section of the poem, Whitman explains that the whole land and its people are connected even after death, because death is only a passage from one form to another: "there is really no death, / And if ever there was it led forward life."

Earlier in "Song of Myself," he mentions the grass which grows on top of the dead's graves; while in this passage, he declares very clearly that people continue to live in the grass: "They are alive and well somewhere," in "the smallest sprouts."