18 pages • 36-minute read
A Noiseless Patient Spider
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Symbols & Motifs
The Spider
The poem focuses on a tiny spider perched on some protuberance. Despite the overwhelming evidence of its insignificance measured against the “vacant, vast” (Line 3) world all around it, the spider never stops shooting its filaments into the vastness. This action symbolizes the restless energy of the soul yearning to find connections into a world so vast and so complex that the individual can feel isolated and superfluous. To emphasize the sheer intensity of the spider’s dedication to making connections that defy its evident vulnerability, Line 4 repeats the word “filament” to suggest that level of commitment. The spider can also symbolize the restless soul in every person who reaches out to find a place in the cosmos, or the spider might symbolize the artist creating works that survive centuries and reach across the boundaries of time and space.
The poet elects an unusual adjective to describe the furiously diligent spider: “noiseless” (Line 1). Of all the descriptions applicable to a spider, the fact that it does not make any sounds might seem obvious, even silly. As Whitman’s symbol for both the soul and the poet, "noiseless" adds a critical element to the spider. In both cases, the earnest efforts to find a place in the cosmos that can defy the limits and the terrors of both time and space are done quietly; indeed, the efforts of the soul to find its place in the cosmos is an internal quest, a journey outward that is in fact inward. And the poet, as Whitman’s modest lifestyle would testify, toils over crafting their works with only the barest assurances of a reader. Noiseless, the soul and the artist find their way to connection.
The Web
If the spider symbolizes the individual yearning (and achieving) connection to the cosmos, as well as the diligent poet using art as a way to connect across time and space, the spider web symbolizes connection itself. The filament that connects both the individual and the alienated artist is at once gossamer thin and yet ductile; that is, it is not readily evident but is strong and able to adjust to circumstances. The webbing then is a “ductile anchor” (Line 9), an oxymoronic phrase in that an anchor is conventionally seen as heavy and thus able to keep a ship in place and safe from unpredictable currents. That anchorage is provided by the webbing.
The speaker does not offer specifics about this Transcendental realm. The webbing represents connection, not revelation, and investigation, not clarity. The webbing connects human beings against a vastness that still eludes definition and still terrifies. For Whitman, both the soul and the poet hunger for something grander than what can be defined and contained by the senses. The webbing, with its pure reach outward, suggests the dimensions of a world beyond definition.
The Soul
The second stanza shifts into the second person “you,” which is typical for Whitman. He often reaches out across time and space to confront readers directly. Sometimes he encourages, sometimes he chides. That direct address compels an urgency to his challenge. In “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” the second-person address is different because the speaker addresses his own soul. Instead of rallying unnamed and unnamable readers, he looks to his own soul. The speaker implores his soul to never be content. He commends its enduring energy and celebrates its willingness to probe the cosmos, to question—“ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them” (Line 8)—to explore out into the very mysteries of the universe. The soul symbolizes that principle of restless investigation without the promise of resolution and against the evidence that such investigations could ever yield insight. The speaker’s soul persists until it finds its way if not to insight, then certainly to more knowledge than previously held.
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