Truth And Moral Values In Thanatopsis, The Devil And Tom Walker

American Romanticism lasted from the 1830s to 1865 and was a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement that was inspired by the European Romantic movement. This time period was very fragile in America because of the uncertainty of building a new nation, where people thought they fit in that nation, and the Civil War that broke out in 1861. To help out the disorganized nation, American romantics used poems, short stories, and novels to provide a new way of thinking that showed a faith in nature as a revelation of truth and moral values and a tendency to value individualism over all social forms or systems. Works like The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Much Madness Is Divine Sense” by Emily Dickinson, “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant, “The Devil and Tom Walker” by

In the stories “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, nature is used as a means to communicate truth and moral values. “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant deals with making death more bearable for people with the simple remedy of “Go[ing] forth, under the open sky and list[ening] to Nature’s teachings” (Bryant 153). Everyone has different ideas of what happens after you die, but no one knows for sure. This idea is very scary to think about, but instead of “shudder[ing] and grow[ing] sick at heart” (Bryant 153), you should embrace nature. Because everybody has to die eventually and go somewhere “thou [will] go to mix forever with the elements [...] with patriarchs [...] with kings [...] the wise, [and] the good” (Bryant 153). Everyone will be together, resting on the earth when they die, which helps comfort people in knowing they won’t be alone. Finally, because death causes so much anxiety and nature solves that problem “[Just] live, that when thy summons comes [...] [that person] lies down