Death in the School-Room

¹ "Death in the School-Room" was first published in 1841 in "The United States Magazine and Democratic Review." It was Whitman's first published piece of fiction.

² The theft of fruit has no direct connection to the school, yet it is brought to the schoolmaster's attention as part of his duty to discover and punish the thief. The schoolmaster was responsible for monitoring and correcting the behavior of his pupils in and out of school.

³ This passionate statement is in keeping with sentiments which were turning against the flagrant use of corporal punishment during the 1840s and 1850s. According to later statements by some of Whitman's ex-students, he was against the use of corporal punishment in his own classroom when he was a schoolmaster.

⁴ "Ratan" is another word for a cane or switch -- a branch cut from a tree that was used to beat students. In a number of stories, authors indicate that schoolmasters keep a number of switches at hand for two reasons -- first, because the stoutness of the switch chosen is determined by the size of the offender and the seriousness of the offense, and second, because the switches tend to break when used vigorously.

⁵ With this passage, the author elevates (or lowers) the schoolmaster from a stern disciplinarian to a brute with a sadistic streak. He is clearly pleased that he now has cause to punish the young lad severely.

⁶ This melodramatic description of the sickly boy and his widowed mother lacks subtlety, to be sure, but there is no quicker or surer way to guarantee the readers' sympathy for the victims and hatred toward their oppressor.

⁷ Whitman once again lays into the schoolmaster with moralistic fervor. His description of the children, whose innocence is in such contrast to the schoolmaster's villainy, has the style and sound of Whitman's poetry. Forty years later, a book about authors of the time claimed that Whitman "came to consider himself a poet ... due to a prose sketch he wrote, describing a death in the schoolroom" -- in other words, this story. Whitman responded that the article was "nonsense, lies, and rot."

⁸ The command, "Take off your jacket!" is a common one that can be heard, for instance, before Tom Sawyer is whipped by his schoolmaster in Mark Twain's classic tale, which can be read on this site. Clearly no schoolmaster wants to let a bit of padding get between his switch and the intended victim.