Thanatopsis Spirituality Quotes

We think the word "communion" is really important here.  When you hear that word, we bet you think of the Christian religious ceremony, right?  We think Bryant does that on purpose, to get us thinking about spirituality and religion.  He’s taking that idea of believers coming together with God and moving it outside, into the open air.  He imagines us joining together with Nature in a kind of spiritual union that could heal our pain and take away our fear of death.

We think this is a beautiful, slightly eerie moment in the poem.  We love the idea of a mystical voice coming out of the water and the air.  This is kind of embarrassing, but it makes us think of that scene in the Lion King where Simba sees his dad in the sky and hears his voice telling him to "Remember...remember...."  Actually, this whole poem is sort of about the "circle of life," isn’t it?  OK, now we’ve boiled "Thanatopsis" down into a Disney movie, and we feel a little weird about it.

There’s a famous line in Hamlet where Hamlet refers to death as "that undiscovered country."  We wouldn’t be surprised if that was what Bryant was thinking about when he wrote this.  Instead of telling us what happens or where we go after we die, he simply tells us that it’s "mysterious."  This poem has a lot to say about death, and that naturally makes us think of the possibility of an afterlife.  Still, the speaker avoids making any predictions about that.

This is as close as the poem gets to talking about something like religious faith.  That phrase "unfaltering trust" is sort of ambiguous, and we think Bryant did that on purpose.  He wants to raise spiritual questions, and to comfort our fears.  At the same time, he doesn’t want to tell us that we have to believe any particular thing.  He doesn’t insist, for example, that we put our faith in God.  Instead, he just suggests that things will be OK, and leaves us to fill in the rest.

This is kind of a happy, soothing image, isn’t it?  Have you ever curled up for a nap on a quiet Sunday afternoon, with the sun shining outside and a breeze blowing through the window?  That’s exactly how we imagine this moment:  a quiet nap, happy thoughts, and good dreams.  It’s a nice way to finish a sort of heavy poem.