Walt Whitman "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" 1856/1881

Walt Whitman "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" 1856/1881

1. Encompassing all of societies views

   • Links to Coleridge
     • Concerned with shared experiences & abilities to transcend barriers of space, morality & generations
     • Whitman regarded as "Emerson's poet" but the links to Coleridge suggest that he is going against Emerson's theories voiced in "The American Scholar"
   • Repetition & Anaphora
     • Specifically in sections 1 & 2
       • "The"/"Others"/"Just"/"Saw"/"Look'd"
     • Mirrors the theme of constant revisiting & the possibility of continuity within humanity based on common experiences
   • Revisiting as an action which encompasses all humanity
     • "Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore.../Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross..."
       • Borad suggestion that all of humanity has the same perspective
     • "A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them"
       • Timelessness of journey

2. Vision & Perspective

   • "It avails not, time nor place-distance avails not"
   • Use of the physical to establish identity
     • "I too had receiv'd identity by my body,/ that I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should/ be of my body
   • No differentiation between physical/man-made and nature
     • Similarities in descriptions
       • "Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, i/was refresh'd"
       • "Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I/stood yet was hurried"
       • "Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm'd/pipes of steamboats, I look'd"
     • Disruption of continual experience by history & development