What do people think when they read "Thanatopsis" - a great poem written by William Cullen Bryant at the age of 17 and the one which remains a significant milestone in American literary history and is considered to be the first major book of American poetry? They think about death while, as stated in a research paper, the word Thanatopsis is connected with it and came itself from the Greek word called Thanatos, which means "demise or death" and opsis means, "vision" or point of view.
It has often been translated as "Meditation upon Death" and even when you start reading you realize that the poem is about death and life. In his poem "Thanatopsis", William Cullen Bryant uses a variety of images to symbolize his thoughts about death. For example, some of the images create a depressed mood "the cold ground Where thy pale form was laid with many tears..." others are on the contrary positive "When thoughts/Of the last bitter hour come like a blight...Go forth, under the open sky, and list/To Nature's teachings..."
Actually, the poem is about nature and how nice it is; about death and how death is not the worst option. The writer offers a peaceful view of death and comfort for the living and does his best to show his views of death. Bryant views death as part of the return to nature, in other words, according to it, death is just another phase of life itself ``Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim / Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again," (Bryant 263). As a transcendental writer, he involved nature deeply in this writing with the purpose of explaining that after life is done, we die but we return to the earth as we came from it.
This can be proved by such lines as " Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again". Bryant considers that as a person has lived upon the Earth, the Earth will now live upon that person while the person will live on, but in another way: "Surrendering up / Thine individual being, shalt thou go / To mix forever with the elements," (Bryant 263).
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The writer tried to convey the feelings of ordinary people on the subject of death and how it affects us. He has a lot what to say on the topic of death. First of all, he considers that death is a great equalizer and represents the end of social status and lables, and the end to any other inequalities that we, as the human race have created for ourselves. He also conveys that in death, we also lose our individuality - we become more like one great voice and that is not bad. Nature is represented in the poem in a rather interesting way. Bryant not only uses a woman to personify it but also to show that it is the controller of destinies and an all-knowing force. He also expresses that when one dies, they should go willingly into death, rather than dread it. |
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Bryant also tells the reader that he /she will not go to death alone. Everyone who has ever died will already be there while social class and age does not matter.
Bryant uses imagery beautifully to paint not a dangerous and forewarning for death, but anticipation for the separation and rioting in society to end.
All in all, Bryant viewed death from a different perspective than anybody else ever did and he was the first poem writer who pointed out on the good points of death. He tries to convince people that they should live in such a way that when they look back on it, they do not have any regrets, but many good memories. William Cullen Bryant in the poem, which he composed in 1811, says that if a person lives a morally correct life, death will be painless and even a pleasant one. The poem ends on a hopeful note "Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams".
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