In the poetry of Walt Whitman, such rhetorical questions are often asked--what am I?  What are you?  But in analyzing this same poetry, another question arises:  who is this you that Whitman speaks to? 

You is, above all else, the reader.  Certainly many of Whitman's poems utilize the pronoun "you" traditionally, referring to an object or being directly defined within the poem (this is particularly true within the Drum-Taps poems.)  Additionally, Whitman uses "you" in many places to address himself, thereby intensifying his poetic presence.  However, there is a substantial group of Whitman's poems in which the "you" becomes a direct address from the speaker to the reader. 

In addition to simply understanding "you" as the reader, however, it is necessary to define this particular, unique speaker-reader relationship with an effective term.  Perhaps the closest literary term is that of "apostrophe."  However, apostrophe is defined by M.H. Abrams as "a direct and explicit address either to an absent person or to an abstract or nonhuman entity" (182).  With this definition, we see that apostrophe is in fact in opposition to the effect Whitman was trying to achieve-- that of an immediate and personal connection to the reader who is very much present in the poetic experience.  This leaves a variety of vague words:  "you," "reader," "reader-you."  Perhaps the most effective term is that of "addressee."  This term not only accounts for the speaker's tone, it also gives a sense of the interaction between the speaker and the reader.  In order for there to be an addressee, there must be an addressor speaking directly to that addressee.  Further, by using the term addressee, we get a sense that there is a concrete aim for the speaker's words: a human, living reader.  And, just as Whitman's extremely human "I" takes on a myriad of personas, so does the addressee of his poetry. *

There are four main personas given to the addressee by Whitman's directed poetry:  the child/student you, the comrade/intimate you (or, in Whitman's diction, the "camerado"), the future you, and the alien/other you.  Further, as each of these personas has its own unique characteristics, so does the voice of the speaker in addressing such a persona.  Thus we receive poems that are alternately informing, inviting, sharing with, and pushing away the reader. 

Before looking at specific poetic examples, however, it is important to understand Whitman's use of the direct address in a more historical setting.  Whitman's personal you can be directly linked to the journalistic work of his earlier years.  Ezra Greenspan notes, "The journalistic style of intimate address to the reader was extremely common in the midcentury years. . . [using] caressing tones designed to cultivate a bond of familiarity between reader, editor, and journal" (107).  Indeed, directly addressing the "gentle reader" was also common among prose authors of the time.  Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Linda Brent (aka Harriet Jacobs) often spoke directly to their readers, or in the very least made generalized appeals to their moral sensibilities. The device was a way of connecting to the literary audience.  However, as Greenspan points out, "with Whitman. . . the engagement of the reader was more dynamic and lasting than it was with his major contemporaries, and more sincere and serious than with journalistic usage" (109). 
 
 

* The term "persona" has two plural forms:  "personae" and "personas".  For the purposes of this discussion, the form "personas" will be used (meaning "an individual's social facade or front that. . . reflects the role in life the individual is playing"), as the plural "personae" ("the characters of a fictional presentation") is in opposition to Whitman's poetic aims.  (Definitions from Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1988.)