The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket Essay Questions

How do literary allusions, such as the references to Moby-Dick and the Bible, work in the poem?

The number of literary allusions used in this poem seem to indicate that the speaker is looking to find answers in the historically significant works that he cites. But in this dense, dizzying poem, those references only heighten the sense of confusion. The appearance of the whale from Moby-Dick, in conjunction with the historical Quaker whalers, symbolizes the greater natural world. The whale's death causes the death of those who chase it; it also causes their eternal punishment, which is to be dead in the unmarked grave of the sea, far from home, and to still hunger for the whale.

How does faith figure in the poem?

The Quaker sailors never halt in their faith, even after their deaths, and the narrator paints them as foolish. The pilgrims in Section VI, too, are like grazing animals in their faith. The narrator does not seem to question God's existence, but he does question His will. If the "blue-lung'd combers [lumbering] to the kill" in the last stanza represent the human race, then it seems the speaker believes man is inherently violent and cannot quite understand, in the face of war and personal loss, why God made man this way.

How do the poem's rhyme scheme and structure contribute to its meaning?

The poem is rhythmic yet chaotic, and the rhyme structure is reliable yet unpredictable; these attributes seem to reflect the overwhelming nature of the ocean, which follows no will but its own. On its surface, the poem seems archaic, resembling a Bible verse or the section from The Odyssey that it references. However, its use of enjambment and the ever-changing rhyme scheme mark it as a modern work. The overall impression is that the poem has its roots in something as ancient as the Biblical stories it references, but by refusing to commit to a single structure or rhyme scheme, it develops its own language and its own mythos.

Is this a poem an allegory, an elegy, a mixture, or something else entirely? Explain.

"The Quaker Graveyard" seems to work outside of the genres where it could almost be placed. It does not quite elegize Warren Winslow; nor does it work as a single narrative thread. Perhaps Lowell resists forms that try to make sense of the world or of tragedy because they are too-easy responses to complex issues that cannot be resolved in a single poem.

How does Lowell address violence?

Most of the violence in this poem occurs in Section V, where the whale is torn to pieces by the bones of the sailors. The speaker asks the Sailor if he will join in. The way the speaker describes this death paints it as a disruption of peace, saying, "The death-lance churns into the sanctuary" and pleading for the figure of salvation, Jonas Messias, to "hide our steel...in Thy side." To the speaker, violence appears to be a choice; this is why he asks the Sailor if he will join. Yet violence in man seems to be inevitable, for every story Lowell references includes it. Men kill whales, and men kill each other. But the natural world does not act as man's peaceful foil, for the ocean is a powerful killer, too. Death is inevitable, but the speaker still condemns man's violence to animals and to others; the violence they inflict seems to make them deserving of the violence inflicted upon them.