3. A psychological approach seems well suited to criticism of prose and poetry dealing with childhood experiences. Indeed, Whitman's "There Was a Child Went Forth" declares a view of unfolding experience that describes the very formation of a personal psychology and makes for appreciating the importance of shaping childhood experience carefully so as not to "misshape" the child. For it is not only the first object that the child looks upon that he becomes but every object and image and emotional experience. Whitman begins with an account of the natural world, with flora and fauna, fish and fowl, the whole of the natural environment containing and to an extent determining the child's experience of the world.
In addition to the relatively innocuous natural environment, the child encounters other human beings, and his perceptions of their natures and difference color his world view as well. Not every personal encounter is innocuous, of course, and as the poem progresses the images begin almost to tumble and encroach on one another. What begins with a reference to "early lilacs" (5) as a simple, deceptively and sentimental lyric of innocent childhood gradually develops into an increasingly busy array of image and sound: "Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks what are they? / The streets themselves and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows, / Vehicles, teams the heavy-planked wharves, the huge crossings at the ferries" (30-32). Life does not get simpler but more complex as the wash of experience proceeds, and not merely because the images multiply. There is a particular contrast between the boy's most personal experience, with his parents. The poet describes the boy's mother "with mild words . . . a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes" but his father "strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust, / The blow, the quick loud word . . . the crafty lure" (25) This is f...