A person’s view of their surroundings can display their emotions and attitude towards life. In Robert Frost’s “Desert Places”, the narrator is standing in the middle of an empty and deserted field. It is snowing and the field is almost looks like a white sheet of snow except for some stubble that is showing through the grass. Around the field is a forest, which is full of animals that are hiding from the cold. The narrator feels lonely for unknown reasons. Robert Frost uses the scenery in “Desert Places” to describe the emotions of an abandoned and isolated person.
Frost uses two types of imagery, visual and auditory, to convey the narrator’s sense of loneliness. In the first stanza, Frost uses visual imagery. He first tells the reader that since “the night is falling fast”, it is almost nighttime (1). He describes the setting, telling the reader that there is “snow falling” into “a field” which is covering “the ground” “in snow” except for “a few weeds and stubble”(1-4). This view of the imagery helps the reader understand the narrator’s loneliness. Instead of using words that convey the loneliness and emotions of the narrator, he instead describes the field to reflect the his emotions. In the second stanza, Frost describes the scenery surrounding the field in the same way. He explains that there are “woods around” the field (5). Inside the forest there is “animals [that] are smothered in their lairs” (6). The description of the forest also connects to how lonely the narrator is. Even the animals that are usually roaming around this field are hiding and nowhere to be seen. It shows how deserted the field is and how deserted the narrator feels. Frost also uses Auditory imagery to describe the scenery. Frost doesn’t exactly ...
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...ds the field is caused by his emotions of isolation and abandonment. This feeling is so overwhelming to the narrator that he cannot look at life as the beautiful thing it is, instead he looks at it with an impassive tone.
The title “Desert Places” represents the narrator’s feelings of loneliness and his attitude towards life. Like the field was deserted and ownerless, the narrator feels deserted and isolated from his old friends and family. The theme of the poem was the emotions of a lonely person. The scenery, figurative language, and tone all contributed to making the reader try to feel this emotion that the narrator is feeling. Overall, the poem gives a deep insight of the emotions of a lonely or abandoned person. The average view of a lonely person would be depressed. However, this poem explains that sometimes a lonely person could have no emotions to express.
He is unable to understand why they can’t leave nature alone. His frustration stems from the fact that so much valuable land is being destroyed, to accommodate the ways of the lazy. It seems as though he believes that people who are unwilling to enjoy nature as is don’t deserve to experience it at all. He’s indirectly conveying the idea that humans who destroy nature are destroying themselves, as nature is only a mechanism that aids the society. In Desert Solitaire Abbey reminds the audience, of any age and year of the significance of the wild, enlightening and cautioning the human population into consciousness and liability through the use of isolation as material to ponder upon and presenting judgments to aid sheltering of the nature he
This extract emphasises the lonely, outworld feeling that would have been felt living in such settings. This puts into perspective the feeling that will be felt during the coarse of the plot development.
The valley is described as a “desolate” place where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens”. (21) Ashes that dominate the area take the shape of natural greenery. The term “grotesque gardens” uses alliteration, with juxtaposition; to highlight the odd pairing of ashes and greenery. Ashes are associated with death while ridges and “gardens” represent the potential to flourish and grow in the promise and ideal of equality as in “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” (143) The trees that once stood here were able to speak to man’s dreams, which allude to America, the land able to speak to man’s dreams and capacity for wonder. All this is replaced by grey ash that suffocates the inhabitants, restricting them to their social class. This presents a bleak image of hopelessness that surrounds the valley.
At other times, nature can be a source of solace for those who have suffered. Following the death of Gladys and Kate, Grainier looks to the horizon to seek comfort from his crushing loss. “All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dream-like business he’d ever witnessed waking – the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds...
The night is a symbol for dark moments of solitude during the speaker’s life. Through being “acquainted with the night” (line 1), the speaker is saying that he is familiar with darkness, proving how symbolism brings out a detached tone with the help of diction, saying that isolated darkness is something the speaker experiences regularly. The exertion of the night as symbolism creates an image for readers to realize that Frost did not actually mean nighttime in his poem; he used the night as symbolism to provide deeper insight and bring the image of our own dark times to describe as “the night”(line 1) just as the speaker of “Acquainted With the Night” did. Symbolism goes on to present itself in line 2, the “rain” is used as a symbol for tears and melancholy. The rain was not meant to be read literally, but rather symbolically as tears, or times of mourning over the harsh struggles in life, just as the speaker did when he “walked out in rain and back in rain” (line 2) meaning he walked into and out of life’s struggles. If the weather is cold and rainy, no one goes outside because of the gloomy clouds and cold rain. Similarly, no one reached out to the speaker in “Acquainted With the Night” during his gloomy periods of “rain”(line 2) or sadness, which expresses
The narrator continues with describing his resentment towards his home life, 'Coming home was not easy anymore. It was never a cinch, but it had become a torture (2).'; This excerpt provides the reader with an understanding of the sorrow that the protagonist feels at the beginning of the novel and throughout the first half. Further narration includes the protagonists feelings of distance from the land and blame that he places upon himself, 'But the distance I felt came not from country or people; it came from within me (2).'; Thus, as the reader, we understand that the narrator has removed himself from the land and his culture.
The theme of this book is that the human capacity to adapt to and find happiness in the most difficult circumstances. Each character in the novel shows this in their way. For instance, their family is randomly taken from their home and forced to work but they still remain a close nit family. In addition, they even manage to stick together after being separated for one of their own. These show how even in the darkest time they still manage to find a glimmer of hope and they pursued on.
Frost begins the poem by describing a young boy cutting some wood using a "buzz-saw." The setting is Vermont and the time is late afternoon. The sun is setting and the boy's sister calls he and the other workers to come for "Supper." As the boy hears its dinnertime, he gets excited and cuts his hand on accident. Immediately realizing that the doctor might amputate his hand, he asks his sister to make sure that it does not happen. By the time the doctor arrives, it is too late and the boy's hand is already lost. When the doctor gives him anaesthetic, he falls asleep and never wakes up again. The last sentence of the poem, "since they (the boys family and the doctor) were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" shows how although the boys death is tragic, people move on with their life in a way conveying the idea that people only care for themselves.
The novel begins as Duluoz/Kerouac ascends Desolation Peak on Starvation Ridge in the High Cascades for a seventy-day job as a lookout for forest fires. He initially anticipates with relish the idea of a seclusion that will allow him to ponder "the meaning of all this existence and suffering and going to and fro in vain" without the distractions of friends, drugs or alcohol Yet as the days dissolve into each other endlessly, he begins to tire of the monotony of Desolation. The stark emptiness greeting him from his outlook reflects the vacuity of life as he sees it. Entitled "Desolation in Solitude," this chapter records his mind patterns as he despairs over the "Void," an uncertain entity that symbolizes an eternal, vast, indifferent force of ...
He has simply gained something in return: looking at nature, not in thoughtless ways but seeing its true meaning and beauty; hearing the sad music of humanity. The “Frost at Midnight” and “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey” contain different understandings of these two speakers; Wordsworth and Coleridge. Wordsworth is raised in a simple countryside and he views his childhood as a time when his relationship with nature was at its greatest; he revisits his childhood memories to relieve his feelings and encourage his imagination.
In “Birches”, Robert Frost uses imagery and analogies as a way of conveying his message. Frost’s use of imagery and analogies are used in the themes of nature, analogies, and imagination. Frost uses imagery throughout the poem to create a vivid image of how he imagines the Birches to be. His use of comparisons enables the reader to view the Birches in numerous perspectives. His use of imagery and metaphors are appealing because they are pragmatic, and create a clear image for the reader.
Stevens’ message reveals itself as the poem unravels: there is never one true understanding of a reality outside of one’s interpretation. The author suggests that one can’t help but transfer their own beliefs and ideas onto what they see; in this case, the “listener” is projecting an impression of misery onto the scenery that lies before him. For example, the first two stanzas are filled with decorative language that serves to describe the visual image of a winter landscape. Using phrases such as “crusted with snow” (3) instead of “covered” with snow provides an evocative illustration of the snow’s roughness. Other phrases such as “shagged with ice” (5) and “rough in the distant glitter/Of the January sun” (6-7) force the reader to experience the miserable portrayal of winter. These are not the descriptions of an observer who “beholds nothing that is not there” (14-15), but rather the objective, poetic appreciation for the snowy
The setting takes place in the daylight of the woods. I felt that Frost set the poem in the woods because it helps reader imagine trees, leaves, and bushes. Therefore readers know that the speaker is alone without any road signs or knowledge of any direction on which road to take. The “yellow wood”(1) means that its somewhere in the fall when the leaves are changing colors. The “yellow” brings out a beautiful image of the autumn to readers. The “yellow wood” means there is a continuous decision one makes in li...
Although he feels trapped in a foreign place where he does not belong, he still seems to have a hint of vigor in him as he is pleading the winds to take him home. The opposite arrangement of the descriptions of the North and the South emphasizes the discomfort of the foreign land and likewise the solace of home. The narrator’s mind is completely preoccupied by thoughts of his homeland thus highlighting his firm emotions. It can be argued that he is not experiencing nostalgia as a fatal disease like Johannes Hofer defined, but more metaphorical meaning of nostalgia connected to longing for a
Then in the last stanza Frost mentions woods again. Even though the narrator has a long way to go he always has enough time to stop and watch the small thing in nature in detail. This goes to show that Frost’s interest in nature is very large, and he portrays this through his characters.