The Notorious Brooklyn Bridge Analysis

Gregory Blanc
Prof.Christina Sassi-Lehner
Eng 12
10/14/14

The Spectacular Notorious Brooklyn Bridge

When you hear the word bridge, I’m sure the first thing that comes to mind is connection. Yes, connection is such a vague word when we talk about a bridge but it blossoms in variety and definitions when we specify the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge is the first bridge built in New york City 1883. The first of many construction work that would build the well known juggernaut of a city that we have here today. Many people view the Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol of new york city and for great reason,. The Brooklyn Bridge connected Brooklyn to Manhattan island and was the upstart of urban working and a spike in business in the city.
People could transport goods many more goods much faster and now people can explore the city very often. It was a big moment for New york city and many people have been awe inspired by it. Two writers, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lewis Mumford wrote poems about this bridge and their views were interesting to say the least. In the first poem Mayakovsky, who is a foreigner and was in the U.S for 3 months, praises the bridge in a way you could only imagine someone would if the lived in the city their whole lives. Mayakovsky describes the bridge as a church and explains arriving at the bridge as a “crazed believer entering” it (173). The sense he gives readers is that this bridge almost gives you an inert feeling of excitement and adrenaline. It makes you feel new and it makes the city feel new as it is a new era for the city and its people. With this bridge came a rise in production and economy. Businesses boomed and people became richer due to their production rising in Manhattan. It did not mean good for everyone as the people who made money off of the ferry had basically lost business to the bridge. Some people ,I am sure, went to the ferry to see the sight of the towering bridge as it was shining very brightly above the city. Mayakovsky praises the bridge as if New York city is his hometown and that he has fallen in love with his bridge and this town. It shows you the sheer power and significance this bridge has when foreigners are in awe to the point of worship. He goes as far as to say “If/the end of the world/befall-/and chaos/smash our planet/to bits, and what remains/will be/this/bridge”(177). This would really lead the reader to feel the power and almost see the bridge itself through imagination of the words Mayakovsky uses. Although he speaks very highly of the bridge it wasn’t always a spot of happiness and the cause for booming production. The Brooklyn Bridge occasionally hosted suicide victims and people mourning in their own worlds contemplating serious life issues. By looking at this aspect and realizing that the bridge wasn’t 100 percent happy, I once again use the words from Mayakovsky 's poem, “From this spot, jobless men/leapt/headlong/into the Hudson”(181). As he says himself, men without jobs took it to there bridge of happiness , if u will, to consider their lives finished and hopeless. Mayakovsky looks at it as a positive for the bridge,of course stating that the sheer fact that people would use the bridge as their place of death gives the bridge a powerful and vivid symbolism that not another place in the world at that time could replicate, and that is life and death. The other artist, Lewis Mumford also write about the Brooklyn bridge.
He had a different way of approaching his explanation of the bridge. As opposed to describing the bridge itself he came up comparing and contrasting the bridge to the Brooklyn ferries beforehand. He praised the Brooklyn ferries and the beautiful rides they would give. It would give beautiful views of the city and gve you much time to admire the crispness of the water and the city. He praised the ferries and felt bad for the future generations that will come, because they wont understand the preciousness and advantages that the ferry had but only the disadvantages. In the words of Mumford, “Those wonderful long ferry rides! Alas for a later generation that cannot guess how the opened the city up, or how the change of pace and place from swift to slow, from land to water, had a specially, stimulating effect upon the mind”(841). He surely loved his ferries but not even he could resist the ,magnificence of the great Brooklyn Bridge. According to Mumford, he has walked all the bridges that crossed Long Island on to Manhattan but he didn’t love any bridge as much as he loved the Brooklyn Bridge. His reasoning behind this is because the Brooklyn Bridge takes on such a prestigious form, with its Gothic stone walls.
(841). As for my personal experience with this bridge, words do not give the justice to the beauty and majesty of the bridge.
Going onto the bridge from the Brooklyn side during a sunset maybe the most breathtaking thing you can do and the most breathtaking sight to see in New York city. The view of the sky scrapers of lower Manhattan competing in height across that sky as the sunset is occurring, gives u a sense of freedom sand luck to be living in this country. The towering height of the new freedom tower paints the background of the bridge like a painting of the future. Mayakovsky and Mumford were utterly socked and amazed at the site they saw but I 'm sure this site was nothing possibly imaginable for them. After reading the poems of these two writers I was able to fixate my mind on the little things to appreciate as you cross the bridge. The beauty of this bridge that not many people have the luxury to cross every day. The beautiful architecture and the time the spent to build the cable wires and stone walls. The little things as the Statue if Liberty and the sunset behind the buildings in the crisp water are many thing that make this city such a joy to live in ad Mumford and Mayakovsky reiterate that and convince young people that this bridge is indeed an integral art of history and art of the future. As an alternative, walking across this bridge and encountering the people full of life and the people on the bicycles happy, wile you witness the ferries and boats and city
skyline and the back drop really makes you sit down and read the poems again and really have a deep understanding of what Mumford and Mayakovsky were writing about. One thing that I felt was extremely important while walking the brdigewas the intense security and police officers that monitored the bridge. You felt a great sense of safety and protection as u walked across that bridge with no fear of criminal acts.

Works Cited

Mayakovsky, Vladimir. “Brooklyn Bridge.” The Bedbug and Selected Poetry. Ed. Patricia Blake. New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1960.173-181