In this literary work, Whitman once again speaks of a swimmer who, by destroying the professor, truly honors his style. Too often the idea of ​​destroying the teacher is blasphemous; however, it is the final key to proving that a teacher has produced a successful student. Students who would outperform the teacher were compared; “Like Whitman himself, our student would be an autodidact, a hungry, undisciplined, self-taught scholar” (Bateman). Whitman had his own image to project: “He who with me stretches out a breast wider than mine proves the breadth of mine…” (lines 1234). Whitman says that a student who proves that he has beaten or become better than the teacher only proves how great the teacher is.