Robert Frost Design Rhyme Scheme

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

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.