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Zoe Glass
Smith
American Literature
5 December 2019
Death is a subject often explored by poets. However, since so little is known about it,
death is viewed in many different ways. The best examples of this are the works “The Raven” by
Edgar Allan Poe and “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant. Both authors wrote during the
Romantic period of literature, yet their thinking was practically opposite: Bryant favored logic,
while Poe thought with his emotions. On the subject of death, both acknowledge and accept its
inevitability and deny the existence of an afterlife. However, Poe is grieved by losses he views as
permanent, while Bryant chooses to live a fulfilling life free from the anxieties anticipation
brings.
Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” is about a naturalistic view of death. In short, the poem states that
death is an unchangeable part of nature, and that one should embrace it when it comes. In this
poem, Bryant rejects “Puritan dogma for Deism” (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 1).
To provide context, Puritans often dwelled on death and the afterlife, devoting their lives to
fulfilling God’s law in order to have eternal life in heaven (Stannard 1305). Deists, on the other
hand, believed that one should focus on their present lives rather than the uncertain afterlife.
(Johnson 1). “Thanatopsis” encompasses this view, telling its readers to “go not, like the quarry-
slave at night, / Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed / By an unfaltering trust, /
approach thy grave, / Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch / About him, and lies down to
pleasant dreams.” The message of this stanza is to accept death and stop trying to fight or delay
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it. According to Bryant, a man should be at peace when the end of his life comes, and welcome it
inevitable part of life that must be accepted, rather than dreaded, and that the best course of
Poe’s “The Raven” presents a very different perspective of death from “Thanatopsis.” At
the start of the poem, the speaker is attempting to distract himself from the death of his love by
reading when he hears a knock at his window, which turns out to be a raven. He believes the
raven to be sent from either heaven or hell, and decides to ask it if his love is in paradise, and if
he may see her one day. The raven says “nevermore” -- in other words, “no” -- causing the
speaker to fall into crippling grief. Poe’s chosen “mode of evasion from the universe of common
experience was through eerie thoughts, impulses, or fears.” These three things fueled “The
Raven” and other “tales of death…”. (Cestre 1). In other words, Poe often chose to avoid the
normal man’s world by writing poems and stories about his fears, the chiefest among them being
death. Unlike other works of his, however, “The Raven” shows more than a primitive fear of
death. Though the speaker does seem to accept that death is inevitable, he doesn’t take any
comfort in this. He describes himself as a “soul with sorrow laden”, asking the raven “if, within
the distant Aidenn, / It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore,” to which the
raven replies “Nevermore.” (Poe 3). The raven, which symbolizes wisdom (as shown by its
perch on a bust of the wisdom goddess Pallas), tells the speaker that Aidenn, or heaven (Moliken
214), doesn’t exist, and that he will never see her again. This illustrates Poe’s belief that death is
the end of life. From there, the poem switches from describing the past to the present in the lines
“And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting … And the lamp-light o’er him
streaming throws his shadow on the floor; / And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating
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on the floor / Shall be lifted—nevermore!” (Poe 4). The raven’s shadow symbolizes grief, from
which the speaker will never recover. In summary, “The Raven” illustrates Poe’s view of death
as the end of both the body and soul. This belief saddens him, and he shows this emotion by
Both Poe’s “The Raven” and Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” present two similar approaches to
death which garner two different emotional responses. Both authors believe death is inevitable
and deny the existence of an afterlife. According to Bryant, this means that we have no choice
but to accept death when it comes. Poe, on the other hand, believes that death’s inevitability is Commented [1]: I feel the need to say that this is not
the other hand. If Bryant is a hand, then Poe is a sock
that has been lost in the laundry.
the cause of the deepest sorrow a human can feel. These views show a classic struggle of logic
and emotion. Though Bryant is grouped into the Romantic writers, “Thanatopsis” shows a
Rationalist belief in the form of a poem. Rationalists believed that logic was man’s greatest asset
and applied it to everything, including religious and abstract things such as death. Bryant knows
that death will come, so he chooses to embrace it when it does -- the logical thing to do, since
sadness and fear will cloud his judgement and prevent him from living his life to the fullest. Poe,
on the other hand, is a textbook example of a Romantic writer. Romantic writers preferred
emotions to logic, and expressing them through writing. Poe feels depressed by death, regardless
of whether or not he should, and he chooses to write about it. In conclusion, Poe and Bryant
present opposing views of death in their poems. Bryant looks at it logically and accepts its
existence without any fear or grief, while Poe feels grieved by it and accepts that he can’t change
that.
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Works Cited
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50465/thanatopsis
www.britannica.com/biography/William-Cullen-Bryant
http://www.deism.com/images/DeistLESSONSIXTEEN.pdf
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Best of Poe. Edited by Paul Moliken, Prestwick House, 2006.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Raven.” The Best of Poe, edited by Paul Moliken, Prestwick
Stannard, David E. “Death and Dying in Puritan England.” The American Historical
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1854094?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents