Summary Of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry By Walt Whitman

“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” is a nine section poem written by Walt Whitman that was originally published in 1856, then revised and republished in 1881. The poem seems to be an attempt to address the future to an audience that is composed of people from the future. Whitman's first section opens with imagery of what the character is seeing in his immediate vicinity. Whitman begins to consider the other people on the ferry with him and those that are on the other ferries on the river. With the words: “...how curious you are to me,” and, “...more curious to me than you suppose,” gives the reader the sense that the character is beginning to fixate on the thought of these people and their lives (Whitman 123). The fixation turns to serious contemplation
of those of future generations. He directs his thoughts to “those who, in a hundred years or even hundreds of years, will occupy the place he occupies now, who will see what he sees and feel what he feels” (Morace). When he states, “...more in my meditations, than you might suppose,” the reader can easily infer that this is not the first time the character has had thoughts of this kind (Whitman 123). This contemplation continues in section two. From here the Whitman clearly envisions the passengers of the ferry that had existed and will exist, and thus they are no longer a just a curiosity to him. When he lays out the similarities of what he's experiencing with what those of the past and future experienced, or will experience, it portrays the notion that all those from different times have a connection to him, since they would be going through the same experience in their own respective times. In the beginning of section three Whitman declares, “It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not, I am with you” (Whitman 124). When he states this “he indicates the dramatic movement of the poem: the poet will fuse himself with the reader in order to persuade him of the universal identity” (Miller). By this stage of the poem Whitman's thoughts can be surmised as existential when “he contemplates forms part of a grand, spiritual “scheme” of life, in which everything possesses its own individuality yet is part of a whole” (Aubrey). He then begins to lay out what he sees throughout the harbor.
The care he takes in describing the scene gives the reader the sense that he holds a great amount affection for the area and the people. He later expresses that affection in section four: “I loved those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river, The men and I saw were all near me” (Whitman 125). It seems that by the end of section 4 he begins to realize that other people on the boat must be have the same thoughts as he is since they begin to notice him in much the same way he had noticed them. At this point of the poem the character is now able to “address them [the readers] in the familiar tone that to readers of his day must have seemed shockingly intimate” (Smith). In section five this intimate nature comes out as a comparison of himself and the reader. When he says, “it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not,” rather than addressing the all-encompassing identity like he did before he is now addressing “the shared experience of the common, the immediate, as well as the abstract, the ineffable...” (Whitman 125,
Smith). He has become so enthralled with this musing that by section six the reader gets the notion that the “thoughts and feeling experienced by future generations have been his too” (Aubrey).
It can even be said that what he outlines in section six reveals that he is truly a human individual, with the all the faults and negative emotions that all humans past, present, and future have experienced. This becomes apparent in his testimony that he lays out: “I am he who know what it is to be evil, I too knitted the old knot of contrarity... ...Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping...” (Whitman 126). Section seven seems to be an outright statement directed towards the reader. When considering the following, “Closer yet I approach you... ...I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born... ...Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?” the reader understands that that this contemplation has made him so aware of those of the future that though the reader is following his thoughts precisely, the reader will never know him the way he knows the reader (Whitman
.126). In section eight he makes it clear that he has “worked his way into the very being of the reader,” and that by this point of the journey of contemplation they have become of one mind (Smith). Also that “poet and reader have accomplished what could not be accomplished by studying or preaching” (Aubrey). By the end of the section the future reader accepts that he/she has been on journey with Whitman himself and even feels that Whitman really does understand the reader. The closing section begins in what seems to be a celebration, and calls back the imagery that was expressed earlier in the work. This celebration “symbolizes the world of time and change—urging it to continue....” (Aubrey). This imagery influences the reader to believe that “all things (natural and man-made) are 'dumb, beautiful ministers' and in which everything and everyone, now and ages hence, has its, his, or her part to play, 'whether great or small'” (Morace). The final lines of the poem, “You furnish your parts toward eternity, Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul,” finally completes the reader's illusion of transcendence that Whitman was trying to convey throughout the entire poem (Whitman 128). One gets the inkling that this work successfully bypasses space and time to create a connection between the Whitman and the reader of a future generation. The reader is left to speculate on how imagination, especially that of Walt Whitman, can turn to conjecture and prophecy. It correctly invokes the feelings and experiences that future generations (e.g. the one that exists today) contend with on a daily bases.