What Is The Meaning Of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry By Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman’s preface to Leaves of Grass promotes America’s separation from Europe, and declares that America needs a bard whose focus is the common American, American landscape, and the American spirit. This freedom from Europe opens the door for America to blossom into the political, artistic, and intellectual model for the world. Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” displays the interconnectedness of him and his fellow passengers with each generation, while at the same time transcending time and space. The ferry is a symbol that represents the ebb and flow of time, while the speaker and his fellow passengers transcend space. The American bard is the poet/historian/musician who will instill the “transcendent and new” (744) into America’s
He argues that “It avails not, time nor place-distance avails not, / I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence” (20-21). This means that the speaker is connected in his mind to the present passengers and future passengers because he’s imagining what they felt and what they thought about as they traveled through time on this ferry with the flood-tides, clouds, and sun rising in the west. He sees those elements of nature clearer than his fellow passengers: “Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me! / On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose” (3-4). His focus shifts from thinking about his fellow passengers and regards them as curious and removed from him, meaning that their mindset is not mirroring his
Whitman is attracted to the American landscape; this is because its land is so diverse and immense with mountains, prairies, desert, and farm land. Particularly in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Whitman becomes interested in New York’s island landscape. Whitman’s use of imagery and free verse inspires the common American to observe and admire the beauty of America’s landscape. Whitman observes and considers the obscurity surrounding the ferry: “Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward, / Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet” (34-35). Haze and vapor symbolize the darker the day is getting as the sun goes down. The soft sounds of the alliteration “haze on the hills” conveys a soothing emotion, so the haze and vapor seem to humble Whitman. He remarks at the variety of people that have come to New York: “The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses,” (41) and “The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset” (43). He talks about how many boats come and go to New York’s port. The flags that are hanging come from all different nations, symbolizing that America is again, the nation of nations. The variety of the people that settle on the various landscapes in America are what make it beautiful. Whitman achieves the American bard because his