Mr. Edwards and the Spider free essay sample

Lowell’s book Life Studies (1959), which reveals his struggles with madness, alcohol, and marital infidelity, gave rise to the so-called â€Å"confessional† school (â€Å"Robert Lowell†). Lowell was a conscientious objector during World War II and was sentenced to a year in prison. While teaching at Harvard from 1963 until his sudden death at the age of 60 in 1977, he was active in the antiwar movement against the Vietnam War (â€Å"Poets†). The poem â€Å"Mr. Edwards and the Spider,† a found poem, was first published in the Lowell’s Pulitzer Prize winning Lord Wearys Castle (1946). Although a footnote in the fifth edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry explains that Lowell used text from famous 18th century preacher Jonathan Edward’s famous sermon â€Å"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God† (1001), further scrutiny and comparison will show that Lowell’s poem was constructed from different sources contradictory to conventional belief. Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan theologian and philosopher of British American Puritanism, was one of the forerunners of the age of Protestant missionary expansion in the 19th century (â€Å"Edwards†). We will write a custom essay sample on Mr. Edwards and the Spider or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page He was known for his â€Å"fire and brimstone† sermons and his leadership in the Great Awakening, a religious revival movement in North America from the 1720’s to the 1740’s. As mentioned earlier, â€Å"Mr. Edwards and the Spider† is a found poem since most of the material used is from a different source, as seen in the comparison chart on pages 6 – 8 of this analysis paper. There are some profound stylistic rearrangements that would classify it as a â€Å"treated,† as opposed to â€Å"untreated,† example. The poem, written in the first person, begins with the speaker using visual imagery to describe how he saw spiders â€Å"swimming from tree to tree,† (line 2) and how they marched through the air one autumn day. The descriptions lend a sense of weightlessness to the spider and this is coupled with the alliteration in â€Å"tree to tree† that emphasizes the movement. Geographic placement, relying only on the information in the poem, would narrow the location down to the New England region on the east coast of North America where the prevailing wind is â€Å"westerly. Also, the line â€Å"Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea† (line 9) refers to the fact that in New England, both the sunrise and the ocean and to the east. The text for the poem’s first stanza is mainly taken from a letter (â€Å"Of Insects†) written by Jonathan Edwards to Judge Paul Dudley in 1723. In this letter, Edwards recorded his observations and ruminations about these cr eatures, noting their â€Å"shining webs and glistening strings† that fascinated him. The first stanza ends with a semi-colon, rather than a full stop, to merge the material from the letter â€Å"Of Insects† with the second stanza that primarily draws from Edwards’ Ezekiel 22:14 sermon. In the second stanza, Lowell takes lines from the Edwards’ sermon based on the biblical passage Ezekiel 22:14, â€Å"Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord save spoken it, and will do it. † Edwards used the pulpit to revive the congregation’s fear of the inevitability of torment in the eternal fires of hell as a repercussion for unorthodox and sinful lifestyles. He compares sinners to insects that are dangled over a fire, vulnerable to the flames. The second stanza begins with Edwards’ line, â€Å"What are we in the hands of the great God? † Edwards compares people’s rejection of the Puritanical fundamentalist beliefs to battling flames with thorns and briars. The thorns may be sharp but it cannot fight a fire. Lowell ends the stanza with â€Å"How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure? † This line is taken from Edward’s sermon, in reference to Ezekiel 22:14, â€Å"Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord save spoken it, and will do it. † In addition to more textual material from Edwards’ â€Å"The Future Punishments of the Wicked,† the third stanza also contains lines taken from his more popular sermon â€Å"Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God. † These lines from the latter sermon postulates that if one were to ask the dead in hell if they had expected their unfortunate outcome, they would deny this and claim that they did not intend to spend eternity in eternal damnation. They will also say that they had wanted to amend their ways but, like a thief, death came unexpectedly. The fourth stanza continues the last line from the previous stanza, with the speaker reminiscing about a time during his youth in Windsor Marsh, a place which is now called East Windsor Hill in Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards’ boyhood home. This line is in reference to the â€Å"Of Insects† letter, which was penned when Edwards was approximately twenty years old. The stanza continues with more lines from â€Å"The Future Punishments† sermon in which Edwards explains that a sinner will yield to the fires of hell in the same manner that a spider does not struggle against being exposed to a flame. Edwards observed that when a spider is placed over a flame, the creature will extend its legs and become consumed, swallowed by the fire. The fifth stanza follows suit and uses more text from â€Å"The Future Punishments,† which starts by raising the question regarding the depth of hell. Lowell adds an identity to the speaker’s interlocutor, none other than Josiah Hawley, Jonathan Edwards’ uncle who committed suicide. According to Christian beliefs, suicide is ranked as one of the worst sins and will guarantee a spot in hell for the deceased’s soul. In this sermon, Edwards uses tactile imagery in attempts to help the intended audience imagine the torture of an eternity in hell. The last lines of the poem use the spider theme again, but instead of the spider as a symbol of the sinner’s helplessness against the wrath of God, the â€Å"Black Widow,† a North American species of venomous spiders, is used to symbolize Edward’s real definition of death: To die and experience the sinking of one’s soul into the endless abyss of hell. â€Å"Mr. Edwards and the Spider† uses the imagery and symbolism of spiders in a variety of ways as it is woven into the central theme. Initially, Lowell used parts of the â€Å"Of Insects† letter to introduce the idea of watching the spiders and observing their natural actions. Edwards saw that the wind picked up the spiders and blew them away to the sea. The spider in this context is a symbol of how man’s mindless slothfulness and immorally complacent nature leads to his destruction. In the third stanza, the â€Å"hour-glass blazoned’ spider, which we can infer to be a Black Widow based on its crimson hourglass marking on its underbelly, is used to magnify God’s might. Simply put, if man is helpless against the venom of a spider, he is no match for God’s retribution. In the fourth stanza, the speaker witnesses a spider burn over a flame. The destruction of the spider was so instantaneous that the creature did not have time to struggle or escape. This is how Edwards explains how powerless man is against his inevitable doom. In the final stanza, the Black Widow is mentioned again, but the spider is used as a symbol of an unrepentant soul’s death. Lowell arranged the text drawn from Edward’s work into a closed form, five stanza verse with nine lines per stanza.