FREE ESSAY ON NATURE AND DEATH IN LITERATURE

NATURE AND DEATH IN LITERATURE

Nature and Death
Literature delivers or expresses ideas according to the social and cultural settings of
the particular time of the writers. Even though, it is designed to be in a certain time
frame, the concepts overlap each other. The poems "In memory of my dear grandchild" by
Anne Bradstreet, "Upon wedlock and death of children" by Edward Taylor though were
written in different eras, they have a common concept "death". The writers in their poems
describe that death is a natural process and compare it with different aspects of
nature.
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) and Edward Taylor (1642-1729) are both early American
litterateurs, and are firm believers in the Puritan experiment in America. Anne
Bradstreet was the daughter of Thomas Dudley, and got married to Simon Bradstreet when
she was sixteen years old. She received a better education than other young women did of
her times. Due to her childhood diseases and deadly, childbirth experiences, she became
very weak. She had to lead a life full of hardships in the new land. Although her
distress is not hidden, faith in God is also the prominent object in her works. Edward
Taylor was a son of a yeoman farmer, went to Harvard for higher education, and became a
teacher for a while. He was not involved with the church and instead became a puritan
minister. He wrote poems for his own pleasure and not as a part of religious service. He
too believed in the puritan experiment in America. The poems chosen of these two writers
are about death immediate family members. 
Although, both the writers have different intentions, they associate death with some
aspects of nature. There is a common mechanics used in all of Anne Bradstreet's poems.
She uses iambic pentameter, the most popular line length in English. In the poem In the
memory of my dear grandchild… she speaks in first person and handles the mechanics
very well rhyming at every alternate line. The poem comprises of two verses of seven
lines each. In the first verse, she expresses the distress of loosing her grand child
Elizabeth. She is sorrowful, and bids farewell to her very young grand daughter. Then she
says to herself that it is wrong of her to cry as her Elizabeth is in a better place that
is everlasting "Or sigh thy days so soon were terminate, sith thou art settled in an
everlasting state". She consoles herself in the next stanza by giving examples that
everything in nature has to die one day. She exemplifies by trees, apples, grass, plants,
and buds. The last line of her poem, Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate
accentuates her believe in God. She gives in to God's power to make everything happen and
bows down to it. 
Similarly Edward Taylor in his poem, Upon wedlock, and death of Children expresses his
gratitude to God on his children birth and does not complain on their death. Whether thou
get'st them green, or lets them seed" meaning that its up to the Lord to decide about a
person's fate. He uses iambic pentameter as the mechanics and his thought flow in an
orderly fashion, rhyming at every alternate lines. His poem consists of seven stanzas
each of six lines. He is actually telling about his family tree in this poem. He
symbolizes his children as flowers and describes when that flower bloomed or withered
off. He first expresses about how wonderful the relationship between a married man and
his wife is. Then he goes on with his children's births and deaths. He symbolizes his
children and their children as different parts of nature such as, singing birds and
different flowers and their odor. However, in the entire poem he never complaints to God
regarding his loses. In fact he praises the Lord and thanks Him when one of his children
survives. This represents his true faith in God. By reading his poem, one can easily make
out about his family, that how many children and grandchildren he had. 
Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor had one thing in common that they were both puritans,
and their works represent puritan philosophies, and most of all they had the common Faith
in God. They both take death as a natural process of life and do not protest to God
regarding the loss of their beloved. Instead they solaced themselves by saying that it
was God's and so he took it away. There is a constant comparison between nature and death
in the works of these writers. One belief that is prominent is that everything in nature
ends (including humans); it is just the difference in time frame. Meaning that some die
early and some livelong than the others.
Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor are from different periods of the history of American
literature, but they have the same belief system. They both have faith in God that He is
the one to decide about everything's destiny. They support their belief by exemplifying
it with the way the world is organized that is anything that is born has to end.