Symbolic Connection

The poems: “The Geese,” “The Purse-Seine,” “Wild Geese,” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider” contain symbolism. Each symbol differs in each poem, signifying different ideas. However, they all share a certain bond, which is the use of animals. The poems are dealt with animals that explain, not directly but indirectly, a crucial point in the poem. The uses of animals in the poems of Jorie Graham, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Oliver, and Walt Whitman have a symbolic connection to human affairs.

The poets do not faithfully consider the animals as animals. They relate them more to humans, rather than what they physically are, animals. For example, in Walt Whitman’s poem, “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” Whitman compares the actions of the spider to humans. The lines of both stanzas correspond to each other. The second line, explaining about the spider, states, “I marked where on a little promontory it stood isolates” (Whitman 723). It corresponds to line seven, which is “surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space” (Whitman 723). Line seven talks about a human. As seen, these lines are about solitude. It continues to go on about the desolate feeling both the spider and human have. So the spider is, indirectly, actually a human.

The theme in “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” “is the quest, or exploration, for meaning and knowledge in the vastness of the universe” (Cummings). He elucidates this idea through the symbolization of a spider and human. He describes the actions of the spider and connects it with the behavior of a human in order to get his idea across. He also uses repetition. Line four says, “it launched forth filament, filament, filament out of itself” (Whitman 723). Filament is reiterated. It is what spiders do when they are loo...

... middle of paper ...

...eading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008. 709. Print

Jeffers, Robinson. “The Purse-Seine.” Literature An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008.713. Print

Oliver, Mary. “Wild Geese.” Literature An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008.721. Print

Pratt, William. Singing the Chaos: Madness and Wisdom in Modern Poetry. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996. Print

Vendler, Helen. The Given and the Made: Strategies of Poetic Redefinition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Print

Whitman, Walt. “A Noiseless Patient Spider.” Literature An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008. 723. Print