Thanatopsis By William Cullen Bryant example essay topic

During the time period of 1709 through l 837, the United States experienced the Industrial Revolution, territorial expansion, and a development of a national literary culture. William Cullen Bryant, at the age of sixteen, soon took an interest in developing a national literature. In the poem "Thanatopsis" by William Cullen Bryant, he expresses his history background, Romanticism, and how romantic elements is portrayed through his poem. William Cullen Bryant's life was filled with hope and adventure since the day he was born in Cumming ton, Massachusetts. Therefore, his writing was immaculate because he already "composed the first version of this poem when he was only sixteen" (Sime 170). People would be willing to travel miles and miles just to see a Museum of Bryant today.

However, Bryant not only "was a very famous literary figure, but as well as an influential voice in religion and politics" (Sime 169). His ability to write poems and stories was remarkable. He wrote the greatest poems with so much life in only a matter of moments. William Cullen Bryant died on June 12, 1878, in Long Island, New York from a fall after giving a speech in Central Park, New York City. However, his name did not die because "he had become a kind of national monument, the widely acknowledged 'father of American poetry' " (Sime 169).

His poems and stories are still today's most astounded writings. They have been one of a kind since the eighteenth century. Lastly, Bryant was buried in Roslyn Cemetery, near Port Washington, New York, "yet even when Bryant's poems seem more like moral fables than free expressions of the imagination, they ring with an air of piety and sincerity no one can doubt" (Sime 169). Bryant was extremely popular in his time and will never be forgotten. His poems and stories will stay with us till the day we die. Romanticism is a revolt against rationalism that affected literature and the other arts, opening in the late eighteenth century and lasting solid throughout most of the nineteenth century.

However, in this century "as nature has been taken over by developers and highways, some writers have taken a romantic view of machines, buildings, and other product of technology" (Sime 1200). Romanticism is the highest expression of the imagination. It has been the maximum century even today. Therefore, "American Romanticism can best be described as a journey away from the corruption of civilization and the limit of rational thought and toward the integrity of nature and the freedom of the imagination". (Sime 142). People during this time period were unbelievable in the ways they used such imagination.

We still today have a part of Romanticism in our time period. Romanticism was the period from the late 1700's to the mid-1800's. However, as a result against classicism "the romantics turned their interest to remote and faraway places, the medieval past, folklore and legends, and nature and the common people" (Sime 169). Romanticism was a immense time period because they emphasized on passion rather than reason. Romantic poets were drawn to the supernatural making them the best poets during the l 800's.

Therefore, because they were discontent "poets looked to nature for lessons such as growth, death, and rebirth" (Sime 170). Romanticism used Romance making it the greatest style of writing. We still today have romance as one of our highest topics. Thanatopsis is expressed as how we will not be alone in heaven because we will be with kings.

For example, he expresses "Thou shalt lie down with patriarchs of the infant world -- with kings. The powerful of the earth -- the wise, the good fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past" (Bryant 1). He wants us to know we are not leaving the earth alone. All people will be together in heaven. Secondly, he expresses, So live, and when thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan, which moves to that mysterious realm, where each shall take his chamber in the silent halls of death.

Thou go not, like a 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. (Bryant 2) He wants us to look at death positive. He wants us to see death as dying in peace and live life to the fullest before we die. Thanatopsis is divided into two words; thanatos meaning death and ops is meaning seeing. Therefore, the meaning of Thanatopsis is "a way of looking at death and a way of thinking about it" (Sime 170). Bryant wants us to look at death and see it meaningful.

He lets us know life doesn't end on earth. Lastly, he describes the earth as a great big tomb when he proclaims "of the great tomb of man" (Bryant 2). He believes than wherever you go, people were buried there. Therefore, the earth is one big cemetery. William Cullen Bryant developed a national literature at the age of sixteen.

It was inspired during the late 1700's and early 1800's, when the United States experienced the Industrial Revolution, territorial expansion, and a development of a national literature.