The Chambered Nautilus

When I first read The Chambered Nautilus it made me think of a hermit crab. I guess I'm kind of weird but every time I reread this poem I just thought of this little animal. I thought of a crab out growing his shell and having to move out and find a bigger and better shell to live in. "Year after year beheld the silent toil" (Holmes) This is saying that someone is working hard quietly. I think this is saying that the crab year after year grows bigger and has to work to find a new shell to live in. The crab silently looks around for a new shell and doesn't disturb anyone while it is doing it, I think that is what Holmes means by the silent toil. "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul," (Holmes) This I think is talking about the new shell the hermit crab gets to live in. It thinks of the shell as a mansion and gets rid of his old home. " Let each new temple, nobler than the last," (Holmes) is saying that each new shell the crab moves into will be bigger and better than the last one it had lived in. "He left the past year’s dwelling for the new," (Holmes) obviously this is saying it is moving out of it's old house into something new. I don't know if this was actually what Holmes was going for when he wrote this poem. I thought the title, The Chambered Nautilus, even relates to the way I viewed the poem. A hermit crab is an animal that lives near the ocean and everything in the poem relates to how I viewed the poem. Call me crazy but this poem is about a crab I just know that is what Holmes was thinking of, obviously! "The poet then turns to the animal's natural history, which he apparently likens to that of a snail or other less spectacular animal because he focuses on its years of silent toil devoted to building its lustrous spiraling coil." (Huff) According to this literary criticism Huff believes that this too is about an animal. This poem of course has a lot of romanticism characteristics. Holmes is discussing an animal the whole time which is apart of nature. He also used detail to describe what the animal in this poem was doing and was giving reasons why the the animal was doing what it was doing. "The moral is to keep growing spiritually (the soul's building of ever more stately mansions, line 29), leaving the "low-vaulted past" (line 31) for ever loftier temples until finally free from the outgrown shell (the physical body after death) by "life's unresting sea" (line 35)." (Huff) This is the poetic meaning of the poem rather than taking it literally. So if you view the poem this way it means basically to keep growing spiritually or forget about past set backs. This is also an example of the romanticism period. During this period they believed in using feeling over reasoning.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell. "The chambered Nautilus"1858. Web.

Huff, Randall. "'The Chambered Nautilus'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007.Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.