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

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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