Poetry "A Noiseless Patient Spider"?

Question

I'm trying to analyze "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman

The poem goes like this:
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul


So far I can tell that the speaker is obviously relating to the way a spider casts its web to his soul searching for a place to build

Answer 1

I can think of two ways you might want to begin your analysis:

First, explore the ways Whitman's basic analogy might work. He says, "Mark how the spider launches its web "to explore the vast vacant surrounding." Now, of course, we know that the spider actually is casting its web to catch prey for lunch. But the poet uses his poetic license to make the spider an image representing the human soul. Each human is always trying to understand this world into which we are born. We learn mostly by trial and error. We cast "filament, filament, filament" out of ourselves. Each human, in one way or another, is "ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking . . ."; that is, trying one way after another to make some connection. Now try to think of as many examples of this as you can.

For example, Whitman the poet is constantly "unreeling" lines of poetry, "tirelessly speeding them," each one an effort to find just the right way to say what he is thinking and feeling and to communicate it to someone else.

Or think of the scientist, doing one experiment after another, looking for an answer to the problem of undersanding the natural world.

How would this analogy apply to, say, an architect, a storyteller, a teacher, an athlete, a lover, a preacher, a traveler, a philosopher, a politician . . . .? The list could go on and on.

Now, in each case, how would the human know when "the bridge . . . will be form'd," when the "anchor hold," when the "thread . . . catch somewhwere"?

For example, when Whitman the poet threw out the lines called Leaves of Grass, was the "bridge form'd" because people read his poems? Did the "anchor hold" because he felt he had finally expressed himself well? Did the "thread catch somewhere" because he felt he did not need to do any more revising?

You see, you can keep applying the analogy in lots of ways and come to your own understanding of what Whitman might have had in mind (or wanted you to get in mind) with the lines of "Noiseless Patient Spider." The poet doesn't exactly tell you what to think; instead he provides a little hook that you can tie your own thoughts to and, thus, make his poem mean. Analyze the poem by showing how this happens.

Second, you might want to analyze the form of the poem. Remember he wrote in a time when most poems rhymed, but he wanted to go back to the poetic forms of earlier days, like the Psalmist of the Old Testament, who did not use regular rhymes. Rhymes repeated sounds at the end of lines: "song, long; air, there," etc. What kind of repetitions do you hear in Whitman's poem?

For example, look at just these three lines:

"Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them . . ."

What repetitions do you hear, see? (1) "vast vacant" uses alliteration to repeat the initial sounds of words; (2) "filament, filament, filament" repeats the same word for emphasis and effect; so does "ever . . . ever"; (3) "unreeling" and "speeding" repeats a vowel sound; this is called assonance; (4) "ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them" expresses the same kind of idea in different words, sort of like a synonym; (5) those same phrases repeat the same grammatical structure, a participial phrase; that is called parallelism.

See if you can find other repetitions in other lines of the poem.

If you do these two kinds of analyses, you will begin to see not only how this particular poem works but how Whitman the poet did his work -- how he "launch'd forth filament, filament, filament."

Good luck!