Robert Frost's Dark Side

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Recommended: Relationship between man & nature in Frost's poetry

Robert Frost once said, “By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.” This quote of Robert Frost shows how Frost can take something positive, a promotion, and expose the negative aspect, longer hours. In his poetry, Frost, like he did in this quote, exposed something in humans. He wrote poetry to show how there is darkness amongst them. The average reader will quote Robert Frost as being a poet of positivity, yet many of his poems actually point out the dark side of human existence. This idea of hidden darkness in humans is especially evident in Frost’s three poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Provide, Provide,” and “Desert Places.”
Frost’s life was full of tragedies, yet he was still able to become an accomplished poet. According to Poets.org, Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. When he was only 11 years old, Frost’s dad, William Prescott Frost, Jr, passed away. The death of his father caused his mother, Isabelle Moodie, to move her family to Massachusetts. Frost became interested in poetry in high school. His first published poem was “My Butterfly.” This poem was published in 1894 in a New York newspaper called The Independent (Poets.org).
The Famous People website states that Frost married Elinor White in 1895, after refusing his proposal a year earlier because she wanted to finish college. The couple had six children, but sadly, most of them passed away. Their first son, Eliot, passed away because of cholera, and their second son, Carol, committed suicide. One of their daughters, Marjorie, got “puerperal fever after childbirth” and passed away. The last child was a daughter named Elinor, who sadly died three days after ...

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...oom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 8 May 2014 .

Fagan, Deirdre. "'Provide, Provide'." Critical Companion to Robert Frost: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 20 Apr. 2014 .

"Robert Frost." Biography. The Famous People, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. .
"Robert Frost." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. .

"Robert Frost Quote." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014. .

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