Desert Places Robert Frost Analysis

The poem Desert Places was written by American poet Robert Frost. The poem uses a sullen tone to describe a snowy field. Frost uses the field is a metaphoric device to express his own internal turmoil. He uses repeatedly uses words such as “lonely” and “absent-spirited” and “indifferent” to obviously show that he feels isolated from any kind of happiness. Frost begins the poem by symbolically combing darkness and snow. He describes both “snow” and “night” “falling fast” so that the reader will see that the snow in the field equates to darkness in Frost’s heart. The repetition of “falling fast, oh fast” is used to emphasis the suddenness of the falling snow. Frost does this to express his anxiety about the sudden gloom falling over his life

The “woods” represents life and “it” is his happiness. The animals are now “smothered in their lairs” and cannot be seen. This is meant to parallel Frost’s inability to see beauty in his life. The animals are a part of what makes the field beautiful and like the animals in the field Frost is unable to see anything positive. He explains that he is “too absent-spirited to count”, which clearly illustrates how Frost has given up on trying to see the bright side. Frost adds that the “loneliness includes [him] unawares.” This oxymoron adds dramatic effect and reestablishes that the field represents Frost. He did not feel emptiness inside until he compared himself to the

He uses the word lonely three times so the reader will certainly know he is alone. The speaker mentions also that he will become even more lonely “ere” or “before” he will becomes less lonely. The field is now described as being a “blanker whiteness of benighted snow.” At this point of the poem, it is assumed that the snow has grown and now covers even those “weeds and stubble.” The field has been striped of it’s geological markings and is now a blank canvas. Without its grasses and hills to give the field identity it becomes nothing. Frost does this because he feels as though he has lost his sense of identity. Benighted literally means to be overtaken by darkness. So by describing the snow as benighted, Frost way of arches back to the idea that snow symbolizes darkness and its suffocation of the land and of himself.
In the fourth stanza the speaker uses third person pronouns to personify his fears. However “they” do not scare him with “their” empty spaces. The emptiness of the field or the dark void of space does not scare the speaker because he has more emptiness already in himself. In fact, the speaker is so filled with emptiness and darkness that he scares himself. Frost is saying that his thoughts might actually terrify himself. Frost uses feminine rhyme in a humorous effect by rhyming spaces/race is/places. He is insinuating that his fears are a