Patrolling Barnegat - PowerPoint

							Patrolling Barnegat
    Walt Whitman
• Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running
  Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
  Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
  Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
  Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,
  On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
  Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
  Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
  (That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
  Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
  Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
  Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
  A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
  That savage trinity warily watching.
• Vocabulary
• trinity (line 4)threesome (suggests the
  Holy Trinity)
• combs (line 5)waves
• wending (line 10)going
• The poem is set on a beach on a stormy,
  wintry night. Someone, presumably the
  poet, is walking alone along the beach
  through driving snow, looking out to sea
  across the wild waves. Through the dark,
  snow and spray he is not quite sure what
  he sees - possibly a shipwreck, and a
  distress signal - then what seems to be a
  group of walkers, braving the storm. There
  is a real sense of danger and fear.
                   Form
• Most of Whitman's poetry does not conform to
  any traditional verse form - he generally wrote
  free verse. However this poem is an exception: it
  is a sonnet or poem of 14 lines.
  Sonnets are often associated with love, so it's
  interesting that Whitman used this form for a
  poem that contains violence and confusion. He
  was recording an experience which was intense,
  vivid and wild - as love can be.
                Rhyme
• Traditionally sonnets have a fairly intricate
  rhyme scheme. Whitman's sonnet
  however has just one rhyme throughout -
  the -ing sound at the end of each line
                 Language
• Think about the title. Patrolling gives the impression of a
  military operation. Do you feel he wanted to suggest that
  the winter weather, or nature itself, is the enemy?


• The poem is written in the present tense. This gives us a
  sense of immediacy: the events are being described to
  us moment by moment and we feel the uncertainty of the
  poet as he grapples to make sense of what he sees.
  This adds to the drama - we don't know what is going to
  happen.
• The poem is written in the present tense.
  This gives us a sense of immediacy: the
  events are being described to us moment
  by moment and we feel the uncertainty of
  the poet as he grapples to make sense of
  what he sees. This adds to the drama - we
  don't know what is going to happen.
• The whole poem is made up of one long,
  complex list of images and actions. It is not a
  complete sentence because there is no main
  verb - we only have the echoing -ing verbs
  (known as present participles) that end every
  line and create a crescendo through the poem. It
  is hard to breathe as we read it, as we are only
  allowed the short pauses of commas. It feels as
  if we are careering along, blown by the storm.
• Things are unclear. The fierce weather
  obscures both sight and sound. We never
  know whether there really is a wreck out at
  sea (line 9): is the poet imagining it, or
  does he actually see a distress signal go
  up? What are the dim, weird forms (line
  13)? The questions he poses are not
  answered.
• Alliteration and assonance are used to
  powerfully suggest the various sounds of the
  storm:

  piercing and pealing (line 3)
  beachy slush and sand spirts of snow (line 6)
  swirl and spray

  savagest ... lashing (line 4)
  death-wind breasting (line 7)
  hoarse roar (line 11)
              Imagery
• The elements of the storm are all
  compared to living things, almost
  personified. This sets an eerie tone: the
  natural world seems alive and hostile.
  Look carefully at the comparisons that are
  made.
• The gale seems to be a monster that roars and
  mutters constantly (line 2), so that the air is full
  of noise. It is as if something wild (line 1) has
  been unleashed.

Is it the sounds of the gale whipping along the
   beach that is producing the Shouts of demoniac
   laughter, or does the sound come from
   elsewhere? This is scary - demons are
   associated with the devil, so the suggestion is
   that the beach is like Hell.
• Waves, air, midnight are seen as the savagest
  trinity (line 4). The three elements work together
  to create a fearsome, evil atmosphere. In
  Christianity the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and
  Holy Ghost is an image of God's serene and
  heavenly power. This savage Trinity, however, is
  Hellish (echoes of demoniac from the previous
  line). What this suggests is that the storm is so
  violent that it threatens to invert the normal,
  God-given order of things and replace it with a
  chaotic, devilish Disorder.
• The death-wind (line 7) sounds extremely
  malevolent. Who or what might it kill? In
  the following line we are told it is
  advancing, as if it was a squadron of
  troops approaching a battle, intent on
  destruction.
• What are the vague, nameless dim, weird
  forms the poet sees struggling in the storm
  (line 13)? A group of fellow walkers on the
  beach? Perhaps people attempting a
  rescue of the shipwrecked sailors? Or a
  line of rocks along the shore? We do not
  know...
• The savage trinity is referred to again in the final,
  truncated, line -
  That savage trinity warily watching.
  But the grammar here is ambiguous. Are the dim
  forms watching the savage trinity - or are the
  trinity themselves doing the watching? If they
  are, we are left with the disturbing idea that the
  waves, air and midnight are all-seeing and
  somehow in control of what is happening. Man -
  the person patrolling - can do nothing.
                Ideas
• Whitman had a deeply religious attitude to
  nature. Much of his poetry is a celebration
  of the creativity of the human soul, which
  he saw as being mysteriously connected
  with the endless creativity of the physical
  world. He saw the ocean as a source of
  life and energy - the same life and energy
  that he felt inside himself and tried to
  express in his writing.
• You can see this idea at work in Patrolling
  Barnegat. The ocean we see in the poem
  is loud and uncontrollable and frightening.
  It is also obscure - we can only guess at
  what we see. But our lives would be the
  poorer for not experiencing the wild storm.
  The human spirit, Whitman believed,
  should also be wild, should always be
  struggling, the night confronting
         Comparisons
• Hopkins: Inversnaid - Both poems are from a personal
  viewpoint, but ...
  - Hopkins writes about the beauties of Inversnaid, like
  the braes dappled with dew, as well as its dangers.
  - The main danger in Inversnaid is the pool so
  pitchblack, fell-frowning. Whitman also uses alliteration
  to highlight dangers (piercing and pealing
  - Whitman shows the relentlessness of the storm through
  the lack of full stops - perhaps to suggest that anything
  fixed and solid (like rules of grammar) are destroyed by
  the storm. In contrast, Hopkins uses a steadier rhythm,
  using rhyming couplets to suggest the fast pace of the
  rushing water.
• stealing- Both poems are set on a winter night, but...
  - Duffy takes on the persona of a thief, while Whitman is
  writing from personal experience.
  - In Stealing, the danger is a result of the character's
  actions, and he seems to enjoy the danger (I joy-ride
  cars to nowhere). However, in Patrolling Barnegat, the
  danger is more threatening (that savage trinity).
  - Stealing ends You don't understand a word I'm saying,
  do you? as if acknowledging confusion on the part of the
  reader. Whitman's poem also ends on a confused note -
  we don't know what the dim, weird forms are, or who is
  warily watching: there is a sense of unease..
• Armitage: Kid - Kid obviously has a very different
  subject matter, but there is a similar breathless
  rush to the way the two poems read. There is a
  kind of storm in the Armitage poem - a storm of
  rage.
  - Kid has a similar rhyme-scheme to Barnegat,
  with a single half-rhyme running through the
  whole poem - yonder / rather / corner / father ...
  The effect here is of a kind of chanted one-way
  conversation....
  - Unlike Barnegat the Armitage poem does not
  make much use of sound devices (alliteration
  and assonance), or detailed description ...
  - instead it deploys a succession of striking
  word-pictures and references to the Batman
  comics (Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!)