Interrogating the Concept of Hell in Taylor’s “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly”
Anna Wiley
Edward Taylor’s poem, “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly,” is one of his shorter and more simply-worded works. The physical action is easy to grasp. In fact, just about all the plot is contained in the title: a spider catches a fly. Like in all Puritan meditations, this physical action has a spiritual meaning. The basic theological implications—the danger of hell and the hope of heaven—are as simple as Christianity gets. But the spider also catches a wasp and treats it gently, a phenomenon that complicates the simple correspondence between the event and its moral. In trying to understand this event, Taylor calls his faith into question. He challenges mankind’s ability to comprehend God, and ultimately finds solace only in accepting and even embracing his own ignorance.
“Upon a Spider Catching a Fly” begins in a typical Puritan fashion, with a meditation rooted in the physical world. The scene Taylor describes is both grotesque and so utterly typical that most people would not give it a second thought. However, he takes on the unsolvable question of how something monstrous can also be natural and normal. He questions what he sees, because as a good Puritan, he knows that everything he observes can tell him something about God. In the first stanza, Taylor brings up his essential question:
Is this thy play,
To spin a web out of thyselfe
To Catch a Fly?
For why? (2-5)
Instead of immediately addressing the question, he provides a mode for considering it. His first use of figurative language is not spiritual, but mechanical. He observes that when a wasp is caught in the nest, “thy whorle pins did not hasp” it (8). A spinning wheel, not God, Heaven, or Hell, is the first thing he thinks of. Pious as he is, he understands religious questions first through the lens of the natural world, and then through his own domestic world.
Taylor then constructs a spiritual analogy that corresponds to this physical scene. The spider represents Satan, and the web “Satan’s stratagems” (although it could also be understood as an extension of Satan himself, as Taylor observes that the spider spins “a web out of thyselfe” (3)). He directly addresses Satan, undermining the Puritan convention of turning to God for wisdom and hinting at his work of deconstructing the concept of Hell through entering into a disturbing interpretation of it. The fly is a human soul, trapped by Satan’s powers and doomed to hell. Taylor offers a reminder of the source of this evil by using the phrase “Adams race” (36) to describe humanity. The image of Adam immediately conjures up the story of the fall of man. Sin and Hell were not necessities in the beginning of creation—they derive from Adam’s and Eve’s choice to eat from the tree of knowledge, which in turn led to the loss of their innocence and their banishment from the Garden of Eden. At first glance, there is a clear moral to Taylor’s poem. Because of the burden of original sin, humanity is not safe. As Jonathan Edwards would later put it, God “holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire” (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” 1741). Taylor illustrates this danger and offers a warning. Unlike Edwards, however, he offers humans some agency by giving advice for how to avoid the fall into the fire.
This goes to pot, that not
Nature doth call.
Strive not above what strength hath got,
Lest in the brawle
Thou fall. (30)
The simple message of the poem is one of human weakness—paradoxically, the sin of assuming one’s own strength. Taylor appears to be cautioning against taking on more than one can handle and flirting with sinister powers.
Yet Taylor’s analogy does not quite work. The spider, web, and fly all clearly fit into the structure of Puritan theology, but Taylor devotes three stanzas to discussing the fate of a wasp, which has no clear correspondence to any aspect of his Hell analogy. In fact, the presence of the wasp calls God’s justice into question. The wasp avoids Hell neither by virtue of its own goodness (as many mainstream Christians would believe) or by the seemingly random grace of an inscrutable God (as Calvinists would assert). The wasp is rewarded for its strength and its ability to do harm—the spider fears it and tries to calm it. Because Taylor previously associated the presumption of strength with vulnerability to damnation, he is furthering a paradox that undermines all assumptions (including his own) of good and evil.
But as afraid, remote
Didst stand hereat,
And with thy little fingers stroke
And gently tap
His back. (11-15)
The event is immoral and seemingly meaningless in the context of Puritan ideals, calling into question the logic of Taylor’s entire analogy. The initial question that he poses— “To catch a Fly? / For why?”—becomes suddenly more important, more frightening, and more confusing (4-5). The role of Hell is obscure and even unjust. Puritans already opened up an alarming way of thinking with their insistence on predestination. What is the point of being good if humans take no role in their own salvation? But Taylor goes even further. In the physical world, it seems that brawn and aggression are rewarded. What if that is the case in the afterlife as well? How can Hell contain and control true evil?
The Puritans endeavored to live in both the spiritual world and the physical world, and go through life using a constant state of meditation to connect those two realities. Therefore, Taylor’s inability to reconcile what he sees with what he believes is deeply troubling to his Puritan sensibility. Rhetorically, one of the most standard poetic devices (analogy) fails. Perhaps, in leaving so much of his poem unexplained, he is indicating that there are irreconcilable differences between the human mind and the mind of God. The material world is entirely unlike the afterlife, try as we might to connect the two. Taylor can attempt to gain wisdom from natural phenomena, but it is ultimately fruitless to try to understand God. There is no analogy, no theology, and no way of thinking that can truly breach the separation between humans and the Divine. Taylor’s doubt is clear in his language. In explaining his analogy, he hesitates: “This Frey seems thus to us” (35, emphasis added). Taylor cannot say with certainty what his observation represents—he can only speculate. Perhaps when he goes on to describe the devil entrapping humans in Hell, he is introducing yet another analogy, thinking more of his own personal separation from God than the theology of the issue. Humans are “Spoiled, made base / by venom things, / Damn’d Sins” (38-40). Here, original sin both necessitates the existence of Hell, and keeps the human race far from a true understanding of Hell. It is because Taylor is “made base” by original sin that he is unable to comprehend original sin, and by extension, to comprehend God.
Yet Taylor finds hope in the disturbing scene he witnesses. He believes that God will deliver him from the power of original sin and “breake the Cord” of Hell (43).
We’l Nightingale sing like
When pearcht on high
In Glories Cage, thy glory, bright:
Yea, thankfully,
For joy. (46-50)
The change of tone in this last stanza is dramatic. Throughout, the poem is dark, disturbing, and full of doubt. Now Taylor turns to imagery of brightness, music, and joy. But in heaven, Taylor’s soul will exchange a cord for a cage—not necessarily an appealing concept at first glance, especially considering that birds are often used as symbols of freedom. And this is perhaps the most striking difference, for Taylor, between this world and the next. Shedding the burden of original sin must necessarily implicate the release of free will, and the perfect alignment of human will with God’s will. Therefore, in heaven there is nothing sinister in entrapment. Indeed, the Garden of Eden was an enclosed space something like a cage. Taylor anticipates an Edenic state of innocence in which the burden of questioning and doubt will fall away. After all, it was the fruit of the tree of knowledge that caused man to fall. After the intellectual struggle of attempting to comprehend the disturbing meaning of the “venom Elfe” and its ploys, Taylor craves relief in the loss of his free will (1). In heaven, choice will be lost, but it will also be unnecessary. Like in the Garden of Eden, all needs will be met and goodness will be omnipresent.
“Upon a Spider Catching a Fly” poses many more questions than it answers. To Edward Taylor, the human lot is to observe, meditate, and constantly question. But the human lot is not to understand. Taylor could easily have left the wasp out of the poem, creating a simple analogy about the danger of Hell, the importance of steering clear of Satan’s web, and the goodness of God. But instead, he defies a clear construction of meaning. He questions the justice of Hell and struggles with his inability reach a union with God. Although he is unrepentantly intellectual—almost cynical at times—Taylor is at heart deeply optimistic. He finds hope in the prospect of letting go of his need to understand, and anticipates an afterlife in which doubt will fall away.
Anna Wiley ‘19 is an English major from Sacramento, where she lives with a cat, a dog, and two chickens. She hopes to someday add a couple alpacas and a horse. Anna is interested in literature and religious studies, and when she isn’t reading for one of those subjects, she is usually crocheting and watching Jane the Virgin.
Works Cited
Edwards, Jonathan and Reiner Smolinski, Editor. “Sinners in the Hands
of an Angry God. A Sermon Preached at Enfield, July 8th,
- Electronic Texts in American Studies, 1741.
Taylor, Edward. “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly.” The Poems of
Edward Taylor, edited by Donald E. Stanford, The University
of North Carolina Press, 1989, pp. 340-341.