Data
What I received from the project was overwhelmingly different from what I expected. First of all, I did not receive as many responses as I selected. From the survey on my website, I was able to produce eleven. Literature Network Forums produced two responses; the one in response to my question was not elaborate enough to analyze, and the other two were gathered from another topic that questioned opinions about Whitman. One Novi Sad student emailed me back; the other I took from the blogs they were producing. Five responses were taken from the facebook discussion on the “Walt Whitman fanpage.” This represents a failure in social networking. Despite the fact that our resources are vast and that Whitman is incredibly well-known, the project did not produce enough responses in any area for me to feel safe in making assumptions about the society.
Another response that I gathered was the lack of dissention for the poet. Even in countries such as Serbia where Whitman was associated with political controversy, Whitman was accepted. I quickly had to reroute my discussion to instead track the trends of Whitman’s enthusiasm. The downfall of this data may be because of the means of research. The individuals examined, although not necessarily “ideal readers,” were fans of literature. They were probably more well-read and more inspired than peers who may have dissented. Furthermore, the medium of technology is tricky. Those that may have taken particular issue with Walt Whitman may have been unable to contact me by means of a computer.
Third, I was unable to completely associate Whitman with America. Only two out of the nineteen responses associated Whitman with America, and only one of those aligned him with American ideology. Even the American responses did not necessarily place their country within his work.
Finally, I had trouble correlating these responses. I expected some kind of great trend among them, but every response had something different to bring to the table. No great percentage believed in his ideas or his work and some said that the two were inseparable. What I did find, however, was an entirely different perspective than my own, and, having engrossed myself with Whitman for nearly four months, I had very strong opinions about him and his work.
For reference, here are graphs which demonstrate this data: Graphs.
Otherwise, go on to the Analysis.