Thanatopsis By William C. Bryant

Thanatopsis Literary Analysis “Thanatopsis” is one of the earliest poems written by nineteenth century poet, William C. Bryant. Thanatopsis can translate from the Greek language to mean “View of Death”. The poem tries to calm and console humans, and let us know that we will all die eventually. There are multiple themes and symbols that are connected to the poem. The symbols connected to the poem include things such as the sun, a couch, graves/coffins, and nature, among other things. The themes include death, spirituality, time, and sadness. There is a variation of combinations between symbol, and themes. The poem is split into three seemingly different parts. The first part consists of the “background”, as in a philosophical sense. The second part consists of Nature, trying to console mankind as a whole, due to the fact that everyone must die at some point. The third part supports part two by using symbols and metaphors to connect the themes to the poem as a
The only thing that lives on eternally in the poem is Nature itself. The poem mentions nothing of a soul, or other unembodied entities that reside in human consciousness. It says that there is no afterlife, or anything other than the physical earth. There is no heaven, no hell, just Earth. The consolation comes through the strength and wisdom in knowing that once a person dies, they become “Brother to the insensible rock”. The corpse returns to nature, where it will be used to fertilize the fruit of life. Nature takes the body, and “reuses” it in a sense, to create more life. It says that our time on Earth is great, but death is not to be feared. If anything, we should be excited! When we are gone, we get to go home, and become a servant to Nature, and her never-ending cycle of life and