The duck-shooter, the deacons, the spinning-girl and the farmer are all completely unique, creating a diverse cast, comparable to the audience, as well as society in general. This allows everyone to seek meaning and relevance for themselves through the aid of a single work. The poem assumes that the emotions suggested by cataloguing such events and characters will partially reflect those of past and future feelings in the reader's imagination. Thus, 'Song of Myself' is not actually a poem about a duck-shooter, or farmer, but rather a poem about life and its ultimate search for meaning.

             Through cataloguing, Whitman is able to touch on a broad range of topics that he feels will capture realistically capture one's own life experiences. Catalogues of seemingly unrelated events makes for a diverse poem, touching on many aspects of everyday life and ultimately invoking various emotions and relationships in the reader. An important theme in the poem is that of memories. The idea of memories is alluded to through the 'Song of Myself', as the song, which is Whitman's life, is remembered and sung throughout the poem. Songs belong in the memory, as do the various, unrelated events which take place throughout one's lifetime. Whitman's 'song' creates a journey into ones own imagination which takes us through his world. As the reader travels through Whitman's experiences, we begin to piece together his own identity, which has no doubt been shaped by such events. A line such as "The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready" (268), obviously can have no connection to "The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case" (273). As neither passage in this catalogue is either elaborated upon or eluded to anywhere else in the poem, their significance is far from obvious. In section 17, Whitman writes, "If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing" (357).