Whitman/Twain

The first reading was by Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” It is a narrative of Whitman riding the ferry between Manhattan and Brooklyn. He does a great job of describing his surroundings, and making you feel like you are on the ferry with him. He describes the “Twelfth-month sea gulls” flying in the sky, and the “white wake left by the passage,” giving you a perfect picture of what he is seeing (22). He is talking to all who have, are, or will ride the ferry when he says, “I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence (22)[.] I think he is amazed that at any point in time, people will be able to view the same beautiful things he is viewing. That even though we are separated by time, we are all connected by the things around us, “[t]hese and all else were to me the same as they are to you (23)[.]

This was not a favorite of mine, I don’t really care for poetry, I prefer stories. It was a beautiful poem, I just have an easier time reading and comprehending straight forward texts.

The second reading was Mark Twain’s ‘The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” This was more my style of writing, and I have always enjoyed Twain’s writing. I think he has a wonderful way of pointing out the not so good things in society, in a funny, non-threatening manner. In this particular story, he is actually telling a story within a story. The story begins with the narrator seeking out Simon Wheeler, to ask about a friend of a friend. You can tell right away by the language, that the narrator is an educated man. I know from my previous experience with Twain, that usually the educated represent people from the East, and uneducated people are from the West. That fits with this story, because Simon Wheeler is from a mining town, which would be in the West. As soon as the narrator finds Wheeler, the tone of the story changes. The dialog is rough, and you really get a feel of the uneducated story teller. For instance, he begins to tell him when Jim Smiley was there and says, “I remember the big flume warn’t finished (104 emphasis mine). Educated people did not speak like this.

Wheeler proceeds to tell the narrator a story not about the man he is asking for, but instead about Jim Smiley. Almost immediately, the narrator figures out that Wheeler does not know the man he is looking for, and “that he [his friend] only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim
Smiley (104)[.] I believe his friend did this to play a joke on him. I like the way Wheeler tells the story with such seriousness, which can only be to convince the narrator that this is not a joke, when in reality, it is. My favorite part about the story is how Wheeler goes from one story about Jim to the next, without a breath in between. When someone finally calls him and he leaves for a second, the narrator sees his chance to leave, but on his way out, “[he] met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he button-holed [him] and recommenced[,]” like he had never stopped telling his story. This was really funny, his escape almost gone without notice, but he decides to walk away and not listen to the rest of the story.

Works Cited

Twain, Mark. "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Reesman, Jeanne Campbell and Arnold Krupat. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. , 2007. 104-108.

Whitman, Walt. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." Reesman, Jeanne Campbell and Arnold Krupat. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007. 21-24.