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Symbolism of robert frost poetry
Symbolism of robert frost poetry
Analysis of the poem design by robert frost
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Frost’s “Design” challenges the age old question of human existence: why? The sonnet describes a spider consuming a moth, an event one might argue is commonplace in nature. Interestingly enough, however, the feast (or murder – your choice) takes place on a heal-all plant. Taking into consideration the plant’s healing potential, the speaker addresses the nature of the universe; its design. What exactly determines the structure and function of our world and its inhabitants? Through its conflicting imagery and broken rhyme scheme, “Design” explores the possibility of forces acting upon our universe and proposes the idea that perhaps there is no force governing the world.
“Design” begins with a number of conflicting images. The speaker claims to have found “a dimpled spider, fat and white” (line 1). Immediately, one is stricken with a sense of confusion; a white, dimpled spider is quite a rarity in most parts of the world, I would assume. The speaker continues to
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draw up imagery of commonplace subject matter in unfamiliar forms: “a white heal-all” and a “piece of rigid satin cloth” (2-3). Typically, heal-all plants are blue or purple and one recalls a satin cloth to be smooth and silky. These unfamiliarities contribute to a sense of uncertainty in the initial octave of the sonnet. The confusion is heightened as the spider’s consumption of the moth takes place on the white heal-all. The irony of a death occurring on a plant that is designed to heal certainly shows the speaker exploring the possibility – or impossibility – of a rigid force governing the universe. Indeed, rigidity is one of the images the speaker draws on to explore this idea; the “rigid satin cloth” is used metaphorically to describe the scene of the spider’s feast (3). The association of a satin cloth with a casket allows it to function as a synecdoche for death in general. Applying the idea of rigidity to death in the context of the first stanza presents another conflict: the speaker suggests that, by design, death should occur in a certain fashion. Instead a death scene takes place on a plant that fails to perform its healing functions; a failure of its design. Furthermore, the speaker likens this whole dilemma to the “ingredients of a witches’ broth” (6). Considering the attributes of a witches’ broth – elaborate, calculated, gruesome, but totally imaginative – the idea of a design governing the universe increasingly appears to be fabricated. The speaker’s uncertainty continues into the latter sestet, as even the rhyme scheme shifts to a more convoluted form to reflect this uncertainty. The initial four lines pose two questions addressing the design with which the speaker is conflicted. Beginning with the site of the feast, the speaker asks “What had that flower to do with being white,/ The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? (9-10). Questioning what business the heal-all had being white rather than its usual blue, the speaker more broadly seeks an understanding of just how such coincidences occur in nature. Continuing in his search for answers, the speaker then asks what “brought the kindred spider” and what “steered the white moth” to the heal-all (11-12). Curiously the speaker suggests that something may have “steered” the moth to the heal-all. So could this really be a coincidence, or was some greater force involved in directing this to occur? Looking back to the initial octave, the speaker likens the heal-all, spider and moth to “assorted characters of death and blight” (4). Of course, one would associate characters with the cast of a production; it is all part of the design. Clearly the conflicting imagery provides the foundation for a conclusion – or lack of a conclusion.
The final two lines question what other than a “design of darkness” could be responsible for the three-way meeting (13). If not a grand design by a grand designer, then what? In the initial octave, the speaker seems to lean toward the idea that it is a rigid design. The rhyme scheme is more rigid and consistent as the speaker points out that the scene is very formulaic, as evidenced by the witches’ broth metaphor. Following the volta, however, the rhyme scheme goes awry. As the speaker expresses his doubt regarding a rigid design, each question exists as its own rhyming couplet. Typically, Petrarchan sonnets have a rhyme scheme consistent to the octave and to the sestet. “Design” follows this pattern in the octave, but the sestet shakes things up a bit, perhaps reflecting the speaker’s doubts over the design of the universe. Clearly the speaker is troubled with the idea of a world governed by a formulaic
design. The conflicting imagery and disruption in traditional Petrarchan form in “Design” lends to a conclusion that the speaker is simply agnostic to the idea of a rigid form for the universe. Taking into consideration the “if” in the final line of the sonnet, it is clear that the speaker’s perception of the scene in the octave as one following a formula is dependent on the existence of a universal design (14). And it is clear that the speaker doubts the possibility of such a design, considering the final line is an addendum to the last question in the sonnet, amending it from whether a design governs to whether a design even exists. Thus, the speaker’s final conclusion is one of uncertainty in the nature of the universe.
Richard Wilbur's recent poem 'Mayflies' reminds us that the American Romantic tradition that Robert Frost most famously brought into the 20th century has made it safely into the 21st. Like many of Frost's short lyric poems, 'Mayflies' describes one person's encounter with an ordinary but easily overlooked piece of nature'in this case, a cloud of mayflies spotted in a 'sombre forest'(l.1) rising over 'unseen pools'(l.2),'made surprisingly attractive and meaningful by the speaker's special scrutiny of it. The ultimate attraction of Wilbur's mayflies would appear to be the meaning he finds in them. This seems to be an unremittingly positive poem, even as it glimpses the dark subjects of human isolation and mortality, perhaps especially as it glimpses these subjects. In this way the poem may recall that most persistent criticism of Wilbur's work, that it is too optimistic, too safe. The poet-critic Randall Jarrell, though an early admirer of Wilbur, once wrote that 'he obsessively sees, and shows, the bright underside of every dark thing'?something Frost was never accused of (Jarrell 332). Yet, when we examine the poem closely, and in particular the series of comparisons by which Wilbur elevates his mayflies into the realm of beauty and truth, the poem concedes something less ?bright? or felicitous about what it finally calls its 'joyful . . . task' of poetic perception and representation (l.23).
These create a sort of volta effect, emphasized by the strong, determined word ‘No’, and followed by a caesura to create a pause, emphasizing the new change. This creates a lean towards the Petrarchan sonnet form, in which the volta lies at the beginning of the sestet, rather at the heroic couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet. This is made clearer as the first two quatrains deal with the subject of immortality by examining the star and how it watches down on Earth, while the final quatrain and couplet, or the sestet, which now has the rhyme scheme of EFGFHH, deal with how Keats instead wishes to be with his lover instead. The effect of the merged sonnet forms creates a free and lively mood which feels unconstrained and more natural. It also makes the sestet livelier, not only due to extra rhyme which intensifies the emotion that Keats expresses, but also by allowing more room to contrast with the first two quatrains.... ...
Frost's poem addresses the tragic transitory nature of living things; from the moment of conception, we are ever-striding towards death. Frost offers no remedy for the universal illness of aging; no solution to the fact that the glory of youth lasts only a moment. He merely commits to writing a deliberation of what he understands to be a reality, however tragic. The affliction of dissatisfaction that Frost suffers from cannot be treated in any tangible way. Frost's response is to refuse to silently buckle to the seemingly sadistic ways of the world. He attacks the culprit of aging the only way one can attack the enigmatic forces of the universe, by naming it as the tragedy that it is.
In the poem “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost, the Romantic poet explores the idea of humanity through nature. This sonnet holds a conversational tone with a depressing mood as the man walks in the dark city trying to gain knowledge about his “inner self”. The narrator takes a stroll at night to embrace the natural world but ignores the society around him. His walk allows him to explore his relationship with nature and civilization. In “Acquainted with the Night”, the narrator emphasizes his isolation from the society by stating his connectivity with the natural world.
Frost establishes at the outset his speaker's discursive indirection. He combines the indefinite pronoun "something" with the loose expletive construction "there is" to evoke a ruminative vagueness even before raising the central subject of walls. A more straightforward character (like the Yankee farmer) might condense this opening line to three direct words: "Something dislikes walls." But Frost employs informal, indulgently convoluted language to provide a linguistic texture for the dramatic conflict that develops later in the poem. By using syntactical inversion ("something there is . . .") to introduce a rambling, undisciplined series of relative clauses and compound verb phrases ("that doesn't love . . . that sends . . . and spills . . . and makes . . ."), he evinces his persona's unorthodox, unrestrained imagination. Not only does this speaker believe in a strange force, a seemingly intelligent, natural or supernatural "something" that "sends the frozen-ground-swell" to ravage the wall, but his speech is also charged with a deep sensitivity to it. The three active verbs ("sends," "spills," "makes") that impel the second, third, and fourth lines forward are completed by direct objects that suggest his close observation of the destructive process.
...ed by many scholars as his best work. It is through his awareness of the merit, the definitive disconnectedness, of nature and man that is most viewable in this poem. Throughout this essay, Frosts messages of innocence, evil, and design by deific intrusion reverberate true to his own personal standpoint of man and nature. It is in this, that Frost expresses the ideology of a benign deity.
...fall of snow and the unremitting “sweep” of “easy wind” appear tragically indifferent to life, in turn stressing the value of Poirier’s assessment of the poem. Frost uses metaphor in a way that gives meaning to simple actions, perhaps exploring his own insecurities before nature by setting the poem amongst a tempest of “dark” sentiments. Like a metaphor for the workings of the human mind, the pull between the “promises” the traveller should keep and the lure of death remains palpably relevant to modern life. The multitudes of readings opened up through the ambiguity of metaphor allows for a setting of pronounced liminality; between life and death, “night and day, storm and heath, nature and culture, individual and group, freedom and responsibility,” Frost challenges his readers to delve deep into the subtlety of tone and come to a very personal conclusion.
Petrarch's "Sonnet 292" is composed in the Italian 14-line poem structure comprising an eight-line octave. It also contains six-line sestet. The fundamental characteristics for the Petrarchan poem structure is the two-part structure. To attain this, the author divides the eight-line octave into two four-line stanzas and the sestet into two three-line stanzas. This structure takes into account improvement of two parts of the subject, expanding the point of view of the piece. While some rhyme plot remains after the interpretation of the lyric from Italian, it does not provide the correct representation of the definitive complexity of Petrarch's work that was indispensable to putting across his mess...
Robert Frost's "Design" is a Petrarchan sonnet that questions God's design of nature and if there truly is a design to life which is illustrated through the use of irony, simile, strong imagery, and a rhetoric question. The sonnet is composed of an octave with the rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA and a sestet with the rhyme scheme of ACAACC. The theme of the poem is written with a sense of admiration for nature, but a skeptic mind for the meaning behind the design of life.
Robert Frost wrote poetry about nature and it is that nature that he used as symbols for life lessons. Many critics have been fascinated by the way that Frost could get so many meanings of life out of nature itself. Frost‘s poetry appeals to almost everyone because of his uncanny ability to tie in with many things that one is too familiar with and for many, that is life in itself. “Perhaps that is what keeps Robert Frost so alive today, even people who have never set foot in Vermont, in writing about New England, Frost is writing about everywhere” (294).
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.
The leading major contrast between the two poems is revealed in the difference in structure for their pieces. Petrarch's "Sonnet 292" is composed in the Italian 14-line poem structure comprising an eight-line octave. It also contains six-line sestet. The fundamental characteristics for the Petrarchan poem structure is the two-part structure. To attain this, the author divides the eight-line octave into two four-line stanzas and the sestet into two three-line stanzas. This structure takes into account improvement of two parts of the subject, expanding the point of view of the piece. While some rhyme plot remains after the interpretation of the lyrics from Italian, it does not provide a correct representation of the definitive complexity of Petrarch's work and message found in the original Italian form of the sonnet (McLaughlin). The...
Frost uses nature as a reflection of human experiences; just like humanity it can have seasons and life cycles. He uses different scenes to depict a certain mood for readers to step into the psychological happening of a man. The idea of how seasons change, Frost compares it through the life cycles that humans encounter. Contrary to popular opinion, I believe that nature is not Frost’s central theme in his poetry; it is about the relationship that man has with nature in which can be seen from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “The Road Not Taken”, and “An Old Man’s Winter Night.”
The vivid imagery, symbolism, metaphors make his poetry elusive, through these elements Frost is able to give nature its dark side. It is these elements that must be analyzed to discover the hidden dark meaning within Roberts Frost’s poems. Lines that seemed simple at first become more complex after the reader analyzes the poem using elements of poetry. For example, in the poem Mending Wall it appears that Robert frost is talking about two man arguing about a wall but at a closer look the reader realizes that the poem is about the things that separate man from man, which can be viewed as destructive. In After Apple Picking, the darkness of nature is present through the man wanting sleep, which is symbolic of death.
Life and death are two things that we as humans must all face. The road from one to the other, from life to death, is a long and at times, both joyous and painful one. Robert Frost’s poems are a prime example of these times and trials. The poems I chose for this paper highlight them, and with Frost’s allegory, they present a sort of silver lining to the string of dark and dreary words he’s pieced together for these poems. The depressing tone to the poems “Acquainted with the Night”, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, and “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowing Evening” could be attributed to the death of many of Frost’s family members, and how despite this he overcame it all, and at the end of his life, was a successful writer. These poems to not go into great explanation of the details of Frost’s life, however, I believe that they are representations of the things path that he’s walked, and how he viewed his actions and death in general.