Nick Osbahr
A Noiseless Patient Spider By Walt Whitman
This poem has become one of my favorite poems. At the start , you learn about a spider, silent and patient, waiting and trying to figure out how to explore his surroundings. Whitman then begins the second stanza with “And you O my soul where you stand,” and everything starts to become clear. Whitman creates this metaphor of this miniscule spider in the enormous world, which has only gotten bigger since he had written this poem. Whitman continues with “Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,”continuing describing that our souls are surrounded by empty, isolating space. Whit then writes that our souls are “Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,” explaining that the loneliness our souls have to endure is because we are just trying to find the one special person who we belong with, or in this case our actual soul mate. We just have to continue living life until things fall into place and we can finally connect, or at whitman states “Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,” and when we can create this moldable foundation that can hold us together through anything.
Whitman finishes the poem with the line “Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.” bringing in the whole spider analogy back into play . He uses the idea of the spider as a representation of the soul to emphasis the idea of the isolated soul inside a huge world, but he could have easily used something smaller, for example , and ant. Whitman uses the spider because they are so misunderstood. Spiders like love and destiny, are very important to life and the world, but at the same time they are sometimes hated, and sometimes oppressed, unwanted and killed.
Whitman created an amazing love poem that at first glance seems to not even be close to what people view as a love poem, but in deeper meaning is one. Whitman created a
misunderstood love poem; he created a spider.
The idea of finding our soul mate reminds me of the greek myth that humans were originally made with four arms and legs and two faces but fearing their power Zeus split them in two leaving them to spend a life in search of there other half. This is a sad idea as its says that one is always lost and searching but I also think it is beautiful to think that there is another person that makes you totally whole and complete.
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