How Does Bryant Present Death In Thanatopsis

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The poem, “Thanatopsis,” written by William Cullen Bryant, is a beautiful literary work that explores death. Bryant attempts to portray the ongoing relationship between nature and death. In William Cullen Bryant’s poem “Thanatopsis,” the correlation between the attitude taken toward nature and death and Romanticism thinking is portrayed by the beauty and mystery of nature, idealism, and the supernatural and gothic.
Bryant illustrates the beauty and mystery of nature by personifying Nature as a nurturing, caring woman who comforts the reader as he begins to fear death. Nature opens herself “To him who in the love of Nature holds/ Communion with her visible forms” (lines 1-2). He is almost in a holy relationship with Nature; and in these moments of communion, Nature appears to communicate with him. As he begins to fear death, the speaker tells him to “Go forth, under the open sky, and list/ To Nature’s teachings” (lines 14-15). The reader can find Nature’s comfort and insight in the calmness of the outdoors. Moreover, what once nurtured him will claim him; he will become one with Nature “To mix with the elements” (line …show more content…

Death makes equal of everyone who dies. The speaker tells him that when he dies, he will “lie down/ With patriarchs of the infant world” (lines 33-34) and with “the wise, the good,/ Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,/ All in one mighty sepulcher” (lines 35-38). He will lie down with great patriarchs in one giant tomb, and Bryant makes this sound pleasing and comforting that he will be with great men from throughout the ages. Furthermore, death is a journey that everyone must take. He cannot run from death because “All that breathe/ Will share thy destiny” (60-61). He should not go “like the quarry slave at night” (line 77). Everyone is destined to die, and he should live his life and face death not in fear but in the faith that nothing will happen to him

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