Comparisons

Hey, it's Erin.

Right from the start of his poem "Thanatopsis," Bryant compares and contrasts many different things in order to get his message across. We already talked today how Bryant compares death to sleep. But he compares so many other things, for example, people as "brother to insensible rock." The tone of the poem seemed, to me, to get dark right away, though it was relatively happy to begin with: "to him who in the love of nature holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language; for his gayer hours she has a voice of gladness and a smile and eloquence of beauty; and she glides into his daker musings, and with a mild and healing sympathy..." instantly moves in to "when thoughts of the last bitter hour come like a blight..." Perhaps Bryant moved so quickly from life to death to signify how brief life is - we are dead much longer than we are alive, as Bryant says that there are more people dead than walking on the earth - or how inevitable death is. As he describes those who fall to the power of death, he juxtaposes the "speechless babe and the gray-headed man," once again asserting that death is certain, and in it we are equal. He also compares the earth to both a "mighty sepulchre" and one that "nourished thee."

I thought his view of the dead was interesting because it reminded me of the speech of Chief Seattle and what's-his-name (sorry!) who wrote the "Indian Burial Ground," both addressing the subject of death. Chief Seattle remarks on how his people, though dead, still enhabit the earth to some extent, that they never fully leave it but are always close by. His thoughts are also similar to Bryant's that there are more people dead in the earth than living, because he speaks of how many of his people there were, and how few there are now. The pre-romantic (oh! Freneau, right?) who wrote the "Burial Ground" adopted a much different view of death, one of activity rather than sleep.