Question

What effect is achieved by the use of blank verse and enjambment in the poem Thanatopsis? Cite evidence from the text to support your response.

Answer 1

The use of blank verse and enjambment intesifies the contemplative and meditative mood of the poem. Blank verse allows for freedom of form, enhancing the tone of the poem, which shifts from being hopeful to being hopeless.

The use of enjambment helps hold the reader’s interest across lines:

To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language; for his gayer hours

-sample answer in plato

Step-by-step explanation:

Answer 2

This techniques might have different purposes in this poem. For example, they might create an specific rhythm that makes the reader a bit lost throughout the poem. The reader might stop and start several times. On the other hand, they pull him/her form one line to the other by keeping up the momentum, what makes the reader mover faster in order to understand what is being read.

EXAMPLE
To him | who in | the love | of Na|ture holds
Commun|ion with | her vis|ible forms, | she speaks
A var|ious lang|uage; for | his gay|er hours