The Analysis on Thanatopsis by William C. Bryan

What do people think when they read about Thanatopsis? Shall people be afraid of death? No is the best answer to respond to this question, especially, when death is predestined; therefore, people shall be ready when they are facing the actual “death”. Usually, their fears of facing the actual death are caused by their own negative perspective, when they have to define and understand about death itself. Death is really connecting to the word Thanatopsis that the word itself came from the Greek word called Thanatos, which means “demise or death” and opsis means, ”vision” or point of view. The new word is defined by the poem: a way of looking at and thinking about death (Element of Literature 166). Bryant used his famous Thanatopsis to show his supportive ideas of looking at the positive side of death in human beings.

In the “Thanatopsis”, a sixteen-year-old Bryant had been supporting and expanding his ideas to express his positive sight on death during his introverted walks on the woods. One of his little ideas was actually offering several “voices” in a dialogue on the subject of nature and death as it says on the Exploring Poetry online edition. Bryant viewed death from a different perspective than anybody else ever did; he was the first poem writer to point out on the good points of death. He tells the reader “When thoughts/Of the last bitter hour come like a blight…Go forth, under the open sky, and list/To Nature’s teachings…” He believes that nature will guide its listener to a better understanding of life cycle, death and rebirth (qtd. In Analyzing of the poem “Thanatopsis). He told us to closely paying attention to nature as it is all around us. Because of the facts he told, many people were attracted by his poem as it helped each individual to gain a better understanding of life and death

Then, after people attracted to his facts of natural death, Bryant made his first well-written “Thanatopsis” composed in 1811, and he anonymously published his work in the North American Review in 1818, before he actually reprinted his works into Poems, one of his collection, when it was already revised for several times before it get reprinted. The revisions involved placing greater or more importance on nature through his personification both as sympathy and reality for the lessons about everyday lifestyles. Later, on his other editions, he would put the lessons right in the end of his poem (Introduction: “Thanatopsis” Exploring Poetry online edition).

As he mentioned about death in every single phrase in “Thanatopsis” to be something natural, dying is still one of the major things that people fear the most. People came to the point where they thought, imagined and categorized it as the most “terrifying”