An Analysis Of Walter Whitman's A Noiseless Patient Spider

936 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Themes in walt whitmans writings

Walter Whitman was born on May 31 1819 in the farming town of West Hills, Long Island. Walt’s father, Walter Whitman Sr. ,a laborer, married Louisa Van Velsor, and they ended up having 9 children including Walt. His family moved from their home in West Hills, Long Island, to Brooklyn when Walt was young. Whitman’s family didn’t have a lot of money compared to other and had trouble raising all 9 kids in one house, and depended on some of the older kids to make money to support the big family with little income. Whitman felt like his family wasn’t going to have enough money to make it so at the age of eleven, Walt Whitman finished going to school and started to work full-time to earn money for his family. Whitman became a messenger boy at the …show more content…

Like a spider spinning its web from inside itself, the lonely soul tries to project from within itself something that will enable it to bond with the rest of the world. The poem may also be interpreted as being about loneliness, about death and the hope of an every lasting life, or about an artistic creativity. But Whitman never got to see the effect and popularity of this soul raising poem because the year before his death "A Noiseless Patient Spider" first appeared in the fifth edition, published in 1871. Whitman’s short yet breathtaking poem captured the souls of many who read it. (A Noiseless 4)
Even though Walt Whitman lead and lived a long and fantastic life his life ended suddenly and unexpectedly double misfortune struck Whitman in 1873. He had been close to his mother all his life and in 1873, she died, and in the same year he suffered a stroke while Whitman did live through the stroke it left him weak and unable to write poems again. Whitman also became very delusional and started seeing thing right before his life ended. Whitman spent his remaining days in Camden, New Jersey, he lived with his brother George's family until his death on March 27,

Show More
Related

  • Analyzing Marie Howe's Poem 'Watching Television'

    949 Words  | 2 Pages

    Her poem switches from positive to negative. She starts the poem with the story of the mother spider and her babies which has a happy ending, but then she goes into talking about herself. In Marie Howe’s essay, she says “…a white frame house, and rising, / and I thought of a room it was shining in, right then, / a room I might live in and can’t imagine yet.” From this quote we notice that she is imagining a house that she could possibly live in one day. Maybe it’s the man’s house and she is thinking one day she could live there with him, but not yet. She says “And this morning, I thought of a place on the ocean where no one is, / no boat, no fish jumping, / just sunlight gleaming on the water, humps of water that hardly break.” This quote provides a sense of loneliness, to think of a place on the beach that is deserted, there are no other people, little noise, and there is nothing there to keep you company. Then she says, “We argued about one thing, but really it was another,” this shows that there was a lack of communication between the two, which could cause Howe to feel like she was alone. Part of one of her quotes, “unbroken by footprints”, created a huge sense of loneliness. She is all alone, awaiting the return of the man she loves, and he hasn’t yet shown up. The fact that the path leading to the front door hasn’t been walked on in two days, would make the reader wonder if anyone besides the man would normally visit her, or if Howe has even left her home in those two days. The last line in her poem is “Anything I’ve tried to keep by force I’ve lost”, and she uses this to provide a sense of emptiness. The movement of her poem from positive to negative is what helps create that feeling of being

    Read More

  • Walt Whitman's Life In Patroling Barnegat By Walt Whitman

    1195 Words  | 3 Pages

    Walt Whitman’s early life and childhood had an impact on his works of poetry later in his life. Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, New York. His parents were Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. At the age of four, Whitman and his family moved to Brooklyn, living in a series of different houses due to bad investments by his parents. Whitman later viewed his childhood as sad and unhappy, because his family frequently moved and they were in a poor financial situation. Throughout most of his childhood, Whitman and his family were in constant financial duress. At the age of eleven, Whitman finished his formal education and started to look for a job. Whitman finished school at such a young age, so he could get a job

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Twain And Walt Whitman

    1113 Words  | 3 Pages

    Walt Whitman was born in 1819 to a family with seven siblings. He started work at a printing service when he was just a boy in order to help out his family financially. During his tenure in the printing industry, Whitman began to read and write. He fell in love with the art of writing and would eventually go into editing as a career. Whitman created a new style of poetry called free verse, and at the time American culture would reject this

    Read More

  • Walter Whitman Research Paper Outline Draft

    526 Words  | 2 Pages

    Thesis: People who read about Walter Whitman tend to say that he had a good life until his mother passed and his book Leaves of Grass is a book about his life and what he went through. Introduction: Walt Whitman was an American poet from West Hills, Long Island, New York. He wrote plenty of poems for the New York Times Journal newspaper, also known for the famous book Leaves of Grass, which had nine editions and is more than one book. The book Leaves of Grass was published in 1888 when he was finally done with all nine editions and he had passed after publishing the ninth edition.

    Read More

  • Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island. His early years included much contact with words and writing; he worked as an office boy as a pre-teen, then later as a printer, journalist, and, briefly, a teacher, eventually returning to his first love and life’s work—writing. Despite the lack of extensive formal education, Whitman experienced literature, "reading voraciously from the literary classics and the Bible, and was deeply influenced by Goethe, Carlyle, Emerson, and Sir Walter Scott" (Introduction vii). Whitman was drawn to the nation's capital roughly a year after the Civil War began, at the age of forty-three. The wounding of his brother, George Washington Whitman, who served in the Union Army, precipitated his contact with the carnage of the war.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Never To Dream Of Spiders By Audre Lorde

    464 Words  | 1 Pages

    The writing style used in Audre Lorde’s poem, “Never to Dream of Spiders” is so unique, it can be read and interpreted in many different ways. In my perspective, loss, sadness, and healing are the major focuses. This poem goes deep into the mind of a woman going through heartbreak. It begins with a break up and ends with her finally accepting it, and becoming happy again. Starting with the first stanza, she speaks of how her days are going by without purpose. Nearing the end, she finds a way to her happiness again. Between all of it, she grieves but also reminisces and realizes that she should be happy even with a heartbreak occurring. The symbolism shown throughout the poem supports my belief of the poem being about a woman and heartbreak.

    Read More

  • Biography of Walt Whitman

    580 Words  | 2 Pages

    Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills Long Island N.Y... In 1823 they moved to Brooklyn. When he moved to Brooklyn he attended a public school. He started working at the age of twelve. While working he learned the printing trade. After he finished school he begins to teach in country schools on Long Island and became a journalist. By the time he was twenty three he edited a daily newspaper in New York and he was a fairly important newspaper of the time. Also he spent thirty six years observing New York City and Long Island. Walt had started experimenting new styles of poetry. When he published newspapers and poems they didn’t show any literary promise. ...

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    Walt Whitman was an American poet, born in 1819. Whitman published a collection of poetry in which he outlined his democratic vision for America. Walt Whitman was credited with being the founder of a literature that was uniquely American. America was a very new country at this time, the Declaration of Independence, in which America claimed independence from England was signed in 1776 and was still quite recent. In 1781 America had proclaimed themselves as the First New Nation. They then began to create a culture that was uniquely American to give Americans a sense of nationalism. America had been influenced by English literature and now there was a search for a uniquely American literature. Walt Whitman took it upon himself to help to promote American identity. Whitman was very liberal as he was pro-homosexuality and an early supporter of women's equality. Whitman was also a passionate believer of an American Ideology that believed in American's exceptionalism. Whitman used his poetry to spread his democratic vision for America; there are many good examples of the theme of democracy in Whitman's poetry.

    Read More

  • Walt Whitman Essay

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    Walt Whitman’s hard childhood influenced his work greatly, he was an uneducated man but he managed to become one of the most known poets. Whitman changed poetry through his work and is now often called the father of free verse. Especially through Leaves of Grass he expressed his feelings and sexuality to world and was proud of it. He had a different view at life, his hard childhood, and his sexuality that almost no one understood made him introduce a new universal theme to the world. Almost all critics agree that Walt Whitman was one of the most influential and innovative poet. Karl Shapiro says it best, “The movement of his verses is the sweeping movement of great currents of living people with general government and state”.

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe Obstacles

    443 Words  | 1 Pages

    He was also seen publicly intoxicated multiple times after that. After being fired he went on to publish more works. Later on, in 1847, his wife, Virginia, died. Shortly after he went to providence, Rhode Island, to win over Sarah Helen Whitman, who was a poet. They had a very brief engagement.

    Read More

  • Walt Whitman’s Children of Adam

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819 on Long Island. As a child he loved to read Sir Walter Scott (Baym 2076). As an adult he took a major interest in the Democratic party, and "began a political career by speaking at Democratic rallies" (2077). However, he is not remembered for his political action; Americans remember Whitman for his amazing poetry. He was one of the first American poets to write his poetry "without rhyme, in rolling, rhapsodic, metrical, or semi-metrical prose-verse of very irregular lengths" (Rossetti), as one of his contemporary critics noted. This new style was not the only way Whitman broke from the way the traditional poets wrote. As Rossetti described, "He not unfrequently alludes to gross things and in gross words—the clearest, the bluntest, and nearly the least civilly repeatable words which can come uppermost to the lips." Whitman’s refusal to shy away from taboo subjects disgusted and offended many of the people of his day, but Whitman possessed "determination not to yield to censorship or to apologize for his earlier poems" (Baym 2079).

    Read More

  • The Spider and Soul in Walt Whitman's A Noiseless Patient Spider

    1271 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “A Noiseless Patient Spider”, Walt Whitman compares the images of a spider creating a web to catch its prey to his own soul. In the first stanza, he describes the spider creating its web. In the second stanza, he begins to describe his own soul searching for something it needs. Throughout the poem, Whitman is relating the spider to the human soul by showing how both would pursue and capture what they need to continue to exist in this life.

    Read More

  • Themes Of Isolation In Grass By Carl Sandburg

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    Loss and isolation are easy, yet difficult to write about. They are easy because every human being can empathize with loneliness. If someone denies this, they are lying because loneliness is a common feeling, anyone can relate. It’s hard because we don’t discuss loneliness or loss publicly very often, and when we do, we forget about it quickly. These poems contrast each other by speaking of the different types of loneliness and isolation, distinguishing between the ones of loss, and isolation in a positive perspective.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Richard Wilbur's Only In Dreams In The House Of Poe

    2335 Words  | 5 Pages

    In "The House of Poe", Richard Wilbur elucidates his criticisms of Poe 's work. He firstly comments on a critic 's purpose, then how Poe 's stories are all allegories. He then addresses the possible opposition to his argument, and then begins his discussion of the common themes in Poe 's writing and provides examples from his stories. This dissertation will analyze Wilbur 's criticism by cross referencing Poe 's work and how it exemplifies Wilbur 's assessment. There is a great deal of evidence to support Wilbur 's theories, but a close examination of each one will determine how legitimate his argument really is.

    Read More

  • The Creative and Innovative Walt Disney

    1370 Words  | 3 Pages

    Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois. His parents, Elias and Flora Disney, gave him the name Walter Elias Disney. Walt was one of 5 children, four boys and one girl. In 1906, his family packed up and moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri. By this time, Walt discovered that he was very interested in art and drawing. “More things of importance happened to me in Marceline than have happened since – or are likely to in the future.” (Disney, 7) Later on, the Disney family had to move to Kansas City because Walt's father, Elias, could no longer take care of his farm when he became very ill. Elias owned a newspaper company to make money for his family and had Walt and Roy, one of his other sons deliver the papers. In 1910, Walt's family once again packed up and moved to Chicago. Walter did not want to move with his family because he wanted to finish school, so he stayed behind and worked for his brother Herb through the summer. In fall, he moved back with his family and enrolled at McKinley High School. Walt did have an interest in his classes, but found a love for drawing cartoons which were featured in his school's newspaper.

    Read More

More about An Analysis Of Walter Whitman's A Noiseless Patient Spider

Open Document