Alani Gauthier

Mr. Williams
H American Literature
30 April 2015
Thanatopsis Analysis
In the beginning of the semester, we read Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant. The
poem really touched me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Even after class, I read it once more.
Thanatopsis starts off talking about nature and how it tends to have the ability to make humans
feel better. The speaker mentions that nature can make pain less painful and it can bring light to
any darkness or thoughts about death. The speaker also mentions that if we, people start to stress
about things that we should talk to nature more or at least listen to the nature surrounding us. I
think the speaker does a great job with explaining natures different roles and voices, with one
being that nature tells us that when we die we will not be alone. The text says the great tomb of
man, which kind of means that every person that has lived on Earth is buried and the living will
soon be in the ground too. Overall, the poem is written to comfort and enlighten people about the
terrible thoughts of death.
Thanatopsis comes from the Romanticism time period and that explains so much.
Thanatopsis has a theme of death and it just happens to be that Thanatopsis means meditation
of death. Because Thanatopsis is based on feelings and emotions, I decided to sift. Starting at
line 18, The all-beholding sun shall see no more, in all his course; nor yet in the cold ground.

In this poem the sun is a symbol of the beauty and power that life and nature have to offer. Also
in this poem, the sun is like a leader over the living and once everyone dies, the sun will die too.
An example of imagery is lines 40-41, The venerable woods-rivers that move in majesty, and
the complaining brooks. This line is one of my favorites because it gives me a vivid picture of
the Earths landscape and features. Thanatopsis has plenty of figurative language with the main
one being personification with nature and metaphors with communion. Tone is always the
finishing touch on a literary work. This poem surprisingly has an upbeat tone considering the
poem is about death. In this case, the poem is reflecting death, but it is uplifting in which a
person should not be afraid to die. Death is not always a bad thing.