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I found our description of metonymy very useful in helpingunderstand Whitman’s writing. Going back over some of the passage and transitions I see how it makes alot of sense that he was using unconscious associations rather than logicalconscious thoughts.  Also, Iunderstand the use of this type of writing.  By reading Whitman’s unconscious creation of associations thereader is supposed to start thinking like that.  Even though a lot of what Whitman writes seems to make nosense, the point is each individual person is supposed to assign their ownmeaning, make their own story.  Iwould call Leaves of Grass borderlinenonsense, Walt Whitman’s random thoughts all pasted together.  The people who like it are the ones whocan assign their own meaning to it, because most of it really has no meaning,even to Whitman himself.       

The other point that I found interesting is that through this style of writing we are all supposed to be creating our own stories.  This is in contrast with one of his central messages of the "merge" or the coming together of all people.  I don't understand why this would be what he is writing about, while he is writing in his unconscious patterns that are supposed to make an individual story for each of us.