An analysis of William Cullen Bryant and His Use of Metaphor
Introduction
William Cullen Bryant, American romantic poet, wrote numerous poems that are still read to date. Bryant’s works have received various criticisms from different renowned authors and scholars. Among the works that William did is “Thanatopsis," “To a Waterfowl Meaning," “The Prairies”, and others. These works depict the use of various literary genres such as romance and drama. The works also show the use of various figures of speech like the metaphor, personification, and anaphora. William skillfully uses metaphors in the poem to bring out the theme of death that is evident throughout the poem. Therefore, the paper focuses on the analysis of the William’s use of metaphors …show more content…
According to critic Lubell Myron, “Thanatopsis, Bryant uses it to illuminate man’s relationship with nature. He is telling the readers to go out and listen to nature when thoughts of death come. He believes that people are only here for a short time before death takes them away and their bodies become a part of nature.” (408). The critic supports the poet on the explicit use of metaphor to bring out the theme of the poem and communicate vividly to the readers. In the fifteenth line of the poem, Bryant advises everyone that when life seems to end, one should go out and listen to the “teachings of nature” (Bryant 123). The use of the metaphor to bring out the message that Bryant had for the readers has been made easy to understand by the elements of images that have been explicitly used. However, by just referring to nature and its connection with a man, it would not be clear for the reader to know whether man is similar to nature or, should draw the teachings of life from the nature. Otherwise, the entire poem brings out the metaphor and its importance to the …show more content…
“Thanatopsis is not so sublime as Coleridge’s ‘Hymn in the Valley of Chamouni,’ but its effect on the imagination of the reader is scarcely less grand.” (Wilson 124). The critique on the grand nature of the poem and the use of the image to communicate to the readers is however undoubted. The poet uses different images such as the sun, the grave and the ocean to bring out the imaginations that would be directly linked to various ideas. The use of the words, “the great tomb of a man," brings out the idea of the nature of the whole world (Bryant 123). The idea seems gross for one to imagine of the whole world filled with several dead bodies. The poem uses the image of the tomb or grave to show the image of the globe. The poet has therefore found away to communicate the perception of the world in a noble kind that the reader might not find scary to imagine. The choice of the grave shows the relationship that exists between death and the place to live after death. The consequences of death have also been shown to be accompanied by the lying of several bodies in the world that makes the globe a sort of a sacred place. In this case, Bryant uses metaphors to put forward more simple descriptions to read and understand how death relates to the nature and the