In Walt Whitman’s morbidly enlightening poem, “This Compost”, death signifies an essential component in the beginning of creation and represents nature’s unwavering ability to expel life and beauty from properties initially riddled with affliction. Judging by the date this poem was written, it can be inferred that this was during a time when people assumed that the dirt used to bury corpses would be contagious and, subsequently, dangerous. The speaker’s angst over this assumption can be found in the lines, “something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk…” (lines 1-3), which suggest an apparently negative connotation of death, and the questions, “O how…show more content… In the poem “This Compost”, Whitman is initially concerned that the soil will contaminate him with whatever deadly diseases it once possessed and, by comparison, in “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, Giovanni’s dominant reason for resenting Beatrice is due to the anxiety that he might have contracted her infection. Also similarly, in the final lines of “This Compost”, the speaker relays his skepticism of nature’s ability to produce beauty from death which is comparable to Giovanni’s confusion over the paradox that Beatrice is as gorgeous and kind as she is genetically wired with fatality. In both texts, there is a bewilderment over corrupt, internal input not producing identical results; just as the Earth continues to make wonderful creations from ground filled with contamination, Beatrice remains benevolent despite the poison inside her. However, there are undoubtedly notable differences in the portrayals of death in the two works of literature. In “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, death must occur in order to end the reign of man’s distorted, tainted creation whereas in “This Compost”, death acts as nature’s incentive to develop pure, fruitful, and prosperous formation. In “This Compost”, the reason behind nature’s capacity to bring forth life from death is not readily understood by mankind, yet incredibly powerful, but by contrast, in “This Compost”, Beatrice dies as an indirect result of Rappaccini attempting to outsmart nature and his arrogant mentality convincing him that he understood the role of nature too well and had the scientific power to manipulate and disfigure its fixed course of
