Death And Death In Whitman's Replanation Of Death

Register to read the introduction… It starts out in a conversation with a child asking what grass is. The line of answer is "the beautiful uncut hair of graves" (Whitman 2747). When we die, we are buried in the ground. We are returned, in a sense, from whence we came. God did form Adam, the first man, from the earth. William Cullen Bryant says in "Thanatopsis," "earth that nourishes thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again" (Bryant 2673). The earth has now become our home, our resting-place, our lap, "and here you are the mothers' lap" (Whitman 2747). The life/death cycle will continue. The bodies returning to the leaves of grass will now nourish the vegetation. New life will sprout from the earth. In a sense, death does not fully exist. The growth of the grass proves that death does not end a life (Reef 50). Whitman asks and answers what happened to the women, men, and children. "They are alive and well somewhere; the smallest sprout shows there really is no death" (Whitman 2747). "All goes onward and outward and nothing collapses" (Whitman 2748). This serves to justify Whitman's belief that people and nature are connected …show more content…
God is the creator of all things human, animal, and vegetable. He is always with us and guides us through life. Whitman also believed in God's caring and speaks of Him in stanza three; "As God comes a loving bedfellow and sleeps at my side all night and close on the peep of day "(Whitman 2745). William Cullen Bryant also has thoughts similar to Whitman's. In Bryant's "To a Waterfowl," he says, "He who, from zone to zone, guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, in the long way that I must tread alone, will lead my steps aright" (Bryant 2676). God is the giver of life and the taker but allows us to continue through the leaves of