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An Analysis Of Walt Whitman's A Noiseless Patient Spider

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Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider” was initially published in 1868, in London Magazine. Originally, it was the third section of a larger poem, entitle “Whispers of Heavenly Death.” In the poem, “A Noiseless Patient Spider” the speaker, Walt Whitman repeatedly emphasizes the connection between the spider and his soul. In this poem, the speaker observes a noiseless patient spider on a promontory leaving a mark on its vast surrounding by weaving its web. The main idea of this poem is to draw the comparison between the spider and the speaker’s soul. This poem consists of two stanzas of five line each and both stanzas mirror each other in size and structure. The separation of the stanzas represents a shift from literal to figurative desires. …show more content…

It delineates the difficulty of human life and how hopeless it can be. Imagery is frequently used diction in this poem which is “A Noiseless Spider.” Whitman uses various imagery to symbolize how speaker feels and he represents the spider as his soul. The first line of the poem, “A Noiseless Patient Spider” gives image of motionless spider, alone and isolated with no sign of life. Walt Whitman fascinatedly starts describing his experience of watching the spider weaving its web in the first stanza. The fourth line of this poem, “It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself” further evokes the repetition of the efforts and he is stuck doing the same thing for the rest of his life. The speaker elevates these images to metaphor in his second stanza of his poem. In the second stanza, “And you, O my soul…catch somewhere, O my soul” the speaker describes the environment considered and understood by the human soul. Furthermore, it describes the movements, and expresses the idea of a soul that is unchained by the human body. In line seven, “surrounded, detached in measureless oceans of space” describes both the Spider and the speaker are incapable of finding anything meaningful in the world, but they keep trying their best with the hope of an ultimate change in the situation. For example, “measureless oceans of space” draws attention of the loneliness that the speaker

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His calm explanation of the spider leads the reader to expect a simple commentary on spiders comparative to other commentaries found in textbooks. This tone, however, contrasts starkly against his more brooding phrase choices such as "husks of consumed insects" (2 Grice) or "devouring her tenth victim" (5 Grice) that create a deplorable image of the spider. Yet somehow, between these conflicting voices, an even more confusing undertone surfaces. In such phrases as "remarkable" (4 Grice) or "mystic reverence" (9 Grice) the reader can hear the echoes of the awe-inspired

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How does she create that effect? She creates that effect by using the story of moth dying than the author describes his inner thoughts. According to the essay, she says, “but, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself; it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death”. This shows that struggle for life even in a small figure of insects.

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The speaker of the poem walks through a reaping setting, alone. Lee uses the image of a bird who flies quickly away before the speaker can catch glimpse of it: “I turn, a cardinal vanishes”. This matches the memory that the speaker rekindles from earlier that morning, when his deceased father’s image seems to appear within the trees, and disappear again just as his child draws near. Lee beautifully uses concrete language to portray the picture, specifically the throbbing emptiness when the vision is substituted by a “shovel…in the flickering, deep green shade” (18-19). The sad, uncanny sensation showed by the event creates the lonely, sorrowful mood of the

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The spider is referenced again in the second stanza, were we would think the speaker would transition to the bullets target, it actually explains the frustration on the spider because the bullet strikes its web, and the spider believes it has caught a fly, but to is surprise finds just hole that has destroyed its home. A metaphor is used describing the spider as humanized in that

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Walt Whitman is one of nine children, he grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and Long Island and was faced with many different aspects of society. Growing up he had a great fascination of the atmosphere of Brooklyn which led him to journalism at the age of twenty. In 1855 Walt Whitman self-published a collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass which was expanded and revised through many editions until the ninth “deathbed” edition which was published in 1892. His brother was wounded in Fredericksburg Virginia, shortly after Walt Whitman traveled to see him. Once he saw the aftermath he was compelled to work as a nurse in Washington, D.C. as a volunteer nurse, in this time he wrote many more poems.

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In “A Noiseless, Patient Spider,” Walt Whitman suggests that to survive and achieve emotional fulfillment, connections must be present. In stanza 1, the author mentions a spider trying to make a web on a “promontory” over the sea (1.line 2). The spider is personified in the first stanza and described as “noiseless [and] patient”, which helps the reader discover the spider’s initial personality and instinct. In lines 2 and 3, the writer uses the repetition of the word “mark’d” to signify the importance of the next lines, in which he parallels the speaker to the spider through word-choice and further repetition. The words “vacant” and “vast” provide the reader with a sense of the spider’s precarious nature and the words’ alliteration add emphasis to the magnitude of the setting and

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“The cry of a tormented man had come to the peaceful green mystery of my river, and the great presence of the river watched from the shadows and deep recesses.”

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“Noiseless” means silent. Noiseless also allows us to know that whoever or whatever is observing the spider is bigger than the spider. The spider was also “patient” which also means that he is accepting to delays and problems without becoming annoyed. This helps the reader begin to look at the spider in a different way instead of as a plain spider. Whitman uses “I mark’d” which means he was the one to notice where the spider was at.

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