9. Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd

Question 1

Context

Answer 1

Published in the Children of Adam section. “Children of Adam” is remarkable for its focus on male sexuality.

According to the late scholar James E. Miller, Jr., Whitman expresses, in these poems, the same passion for heterosexual love that he demonstrates for love between men. Moreover, he identifies himself explicitly with Adam, walking with Eve and reveling in the beauty of his masculine form.

In “Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd,” the narrator has communion with the masses. Whitman was fascinated with the mundane fact of how human beings, particularly in crowded cities, continually brushed up against one another, glanced at one another, smelled one another, and then passed on, unlikely to see one another again.

Question 2

Themes

Answer 2

• Transcendence
• Love, Separation and Connection
• Death as the truth- however the presence of death invites an element of pressure to each detail. the need to make every second count. the ocean of of life which connected them initially now seeks to seperate them through similar natural forces. however, we will be truly connected in death- reunited.

Question 3

Metaphor: Rolling Ocean

Answer 3

metaphor for the larger chaos of the world.

Question 4

Structure

Answer 4

‘Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd’ by Walt Whitman is a two-stanza poem that is separated into one set of five lines and another set of eight. The first stanza contains the relayed words of a dying lover while the second contains the speaker’s own response and reassurances.

Question 5

Margaret H. Duggar

Answer 5

“It addresses the existential crisis of individuality by the fall into selfhood following the intense affirmation of the body & the sensory life.”

Question 6

Tanmoy Baghira

Answer 6

“Phrases like “I too am part of the ocean my love, we are not so much separated” becomes the keyword of conscious union of an individual psyche with the world psyche.”

“cohesion of all” in this poem also serves the same purpose