Mr. Edwards and the Spider

As a preacher, Edwards was intent on bringing his congregants close to God. But rather than focus on God’s message of love and mercy, Edwards, the speaker in Lowell’s poem, terrifies his parishioners into converting. Edwards’s extended metaphor comparing spiders and sinners showed the dangers that threaten when one does not repent and change one’s ways.

As Edwards whips his audience into a spiritual frenzy, urging them to take action against the fate of damnation or else risk the fate of God who can “destroy, / Baffle, and dissipate your soul” (Lines 26-27), there is a parallel sense of passivity that overtakes the “You” who seems unable to “play against a sickness past your cure” (Line 17). This torpor recalls the spiders from the first stanza, not the marching, swimming, active spiders but rather the ones that “purpose nothing but their ease and die” (Line 8).

Lowell shows how Edwards’s imagery not only catalyzed conversions but also worked to create a profound lack of will in his audience. Words like “lacerations,” “sickness,” “no long struggle,” “no desire,” “abolished will” all raise the questions, “How will the

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