Point of View

“Thanatopsis” is written from the perspective of an omniscient narrator. There are no first-person pronouns used in the poem’s narration, but the narrator addresses an unidentified universal human subject through archaic pronouns “thee” and “thy.” This universal subject is gendered in the masculine. The very first line of the poem establishes this: “To him who in love of Nature holds / Communion with her visible forms” (1-2). Nature speaks in various forms in the verse, as the narrator quotes from this feminized sentience as it regards humanity.

The voice of the narration offers a type of counsel to the universal subject. This is part of a larger rumination that explicitly applies to all of humanity. Throughout the verse the natural world is repeatedly invoked as embodying an external subjectivity to human consciousness. This entity is also imbued with an omniscience, as the narrator, for instance...