The river below Passaic Falls, and especially imagery of its rushing waters, form a central symbol throughout the book. This symbol supports the thematic relationship between the natural landscape and the human body through development of recurrent imagery (The Relationship Between Nature and the Body). This imagery, mostly of water, draws concrete connections between water found in the landscape and water found inside the human body itself.

The motif of the foot—both human and metrical—helps to explain one of the central ideas of Paterson; namely, Williams’s desire to construct the future of American poetry. The foot also supports the theme recurrent throughout the book of The Future of Poetry. Williams mentions human feet in action throughout the text, most notably in Book 2 when Paterson walks through the landscape. The metrical foot appears through acerbic allusions to the proper construction of poetic meter, as well as how the sonic quality of treading and walking evokes metrical patterns.