Cavalry Crossing a Ford

When I first read this story I did not really comprehend it that well. I got the meaning of it and the meaning of the story was that the cavalry or soldiers were crossing the river. Walt Whitman did a great job describing throughout his story. He talked about "their arms flash in the sun-hark to the musical clank" (Whitman 341), this quote just shows the detail that he put into the story to make it more effective to the reader. This description for me made me more into the story.

I would say that when Whitman wrote this story he was focusing on the ordinary man. This is sort of similar to Thoreau's writings because Thoreau believed throughout his life that "the common man can reform themselves and in doing so, reform the surrounding and the government" (Harding). Both of these writers had their own opinion on individual's. Thoreau would believed that each person would shape the environment around them and he also believed that the individual shaped the government. Here is another quote from "Calvary Crossing a Ford", "Behold the brown-face men, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles" (Whitman 341). This quote just basically states that Whitman definitely focused on man and wrote about the individuals. Like I said before Thoreau believed that we, or the individual, shape the environment around us and the government that we serve.

Now on to Emerson. Emerson served as basically a role model for Walt Whitman. I looked at the page before reading the story to see if it had something on Emerson and I found that Walt Whitman was inspired by Emerson. Here is the quote I found, "The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune" (Whitman 340). I found this quote interesting because Whitman really loved Emerson and tried to be like him. In the end, I found that Whitman did kind of end up like Emerson with his writing.

Bibliography

Harding, Walter. A Thoreau Handbook by Walter Harding: pp. 131-173 (New York University Press, 1959). © 1959 by New York University Press. Quoted as "Thoreau's Ideas" in Harold Bloom, ed. Henry David Thoreau, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Whitman, Walt. "Calvary Crossing a Ford." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 340-341. Print.