While reading Walt Whitman’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, I immediately noticed the use of repetition and realized that it was used to constantly bring the reader’s focus back onto the point he is making. Basically, Whitman says that even if each individual has his/her own experiences, we can all relate on the fact that we still share the same land, making us no different than our neighbor. He admits his curiosity and and unfamiliarity with the different sorts of people that enter Manhattan and Brooklyn but then realize that all of them are standing under the same sun and under the same seagulls that were “high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies.”(Stanza 3). Such lines have been repeated throughout the poem, almost to pull him back to the reality of the situation which is that even if his personal life may be different than the culture and lifestyles of so many others, they still function the same as human beings. An example is shown when Waltman writes through the narrator “lived the same life with the rest, the same laughing, gnawing, sleeping.” (Stanza 6)

His observations made them question what real line is drawn between people that makes them believe that they aren’t compatible or approving of someone else because in many ways, we still see the same things and have the same reactions: when we think something’s funny, we laugh. When we find something upsetting, we frown. And he realizes that New York is a huge melting pot and he realizes just how much he respects New York for being such a great blender of different people. Coming to the realization that we are all the same in such a big city as New York, made the narrator fall in love with the city and embrace it for the unity that it brings and will continue to bring, as the narrator feels not much will change in the future in terms of how we resemble each other.

The gender of the narrator is not specified but perhaps that was Whitman’s way of saying that gender doesn’t make much of a difference because all people still experience similar situations in such a vibrant city. The use of the Brooklyn Ferry is that it allows the narrator to look at people from all different backgrounds. Tourists and residents use the ferry to get around so the narrator is fully able to observe different cultures yet see how the tourists behave the same as he/does.