What Is Walt Whitman's Use Of Parallel In Section Three And Section Nine

In Walt Whitman’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Whitman section three and section nine parallel, but section three demonstrate’s Whitman’s objective observations while section nine demonstrates his commands. In both sections, he references what he notices while crossing the Brooklyn Ferry, but in the first scene he sets himself up as solely an observer. Though transitioning to a commander in section nine, he commands most of the scenes to stay the same as how he depicted them in section three, with only one main exception being a scene involving seagulls. By using commands in section nine and changing the actions of seagulls, Whitman draws a parallel between himself and the seagulls, showing that he is not just an idle observer, but capable of commanding

and changing the world based on his point of view.
Whitman speaks of his past ventures across the Brooklyn Ferry, but describes only what he observed, setting himself up as an idle crosser on the ferry just as everyone else.

By using anaphora with “I” and “you”, for example, by stating “Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d”, he acknowledges that he is the same as all the other travels who have experienced the same venture. He uses typography to show a white space between his declarations of “I” and “you”, and continues to a different anaphoric trend of repeating watched, saw, and looked. He states that he “saw [sea-gulls] high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies” and “Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light around the shape of [his] head,” emphasizing that during his ventures on the Brooklyn Ferry, he had only been an

observer.
In section nine, Whitman uses many of the same images, but he commands instead of observes, indicating a change in what he believes his power is as a poet. Again, he mentions “fine spokes of light, from the shape of [his] head,” but this time he commands that the light diverge. He also takes commands the seagulls to “fly sideways, r wheel in large circles high in the air,” a stark contradiction to his references to sedentary seagulls in lines 31 and 93. Though most of his commands do not ask his old general observations to change course, for example, he “[sees] the reflection of the summer sky in the water” in section three but commands the water “recieve the summer sky” in section nine, only the commands that directly relay back to him change, showing that his power rests in what he can change in himself.
The image of the seagulls surrounded by light and his head surrounded by light show the connection between Whitman and the seagulls.

Though he commands everything in section nine, the only things he can change is how he perceives the world, and therefore he demonstrates that his character in reflected throughout the entire poem by the idle seagulls with oscillating bodies, allowing the air to carry them wherever. When he commands “fly on, sea-birds! Fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air” in comparison to his previous observation where the seagulls flew in “slow-wheeling circles,” he shows how he has changed his point of view and made himself ambitious instead of slow-moving and

idle.
Whitman demonstrates through Crossing Brooklyn Ferry that through his connections with the universe, he is not just an idle observer -- he is ambitious and he can change things through his own perception and connections with other. In early America, people saw poetry writing as an idle task executed by idle men, and Whitman wanted to demonstrate that just because he is an observer does not mean he is not a commanding force. He writes Crossing Brooklyn Ferry to prove that poets can be influential and powerful with just their point of view, because they are one with the chain of everything in existence.