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Frost's use of nature in his various poems
Frost's use of nature in his various poems
Frost's use of nature in his various poems
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Robert Frost was an American poet born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He was famous for his extremely realistic depictions of rural life. Many of his poems were about the themes of time passing, making memories, decisions and journeys and/or life and death. Most of his poems were set in rural areas of New England, America. In his poems ‘The Road Not Taken’ and ‘Stopping By Woods’ he uses many different poetic devices, such as: metaphors, ironic tone, rhyming stanzas and repetition to communicate his main themes of time passing, decisions and memories.
Some similar techniques used by Frost in ‘Stopping By Woods’ and ‘The Road Not Taken’ are repetition and metaphors. The continual use of metaphors in both of these poems adds a certain depth to the poems, another layer of meaning. For example, “And miles to go before I sleep.” This line is the closing line of the poem ‘Stopping By Woods’, it may seem like the persona is talking about the length he has to travel before he can rest or before he reaches his destination, but this last line is repeated. This repetition reinforces Frost’s metaphoric connotations of sleep for death, linking this to the main things the persona has to do before he dies. Similarly, metaphors are used in ‘The Road Not Taken’ also, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” is the opening line in this poem. It has special significance because it hints to the main meaning of the poem. It may seem like the persona is talking about a fork that occurred in the road that he was travelling along in autumn, but there is underlying meaning. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” shows that he had a choice about what direction to take in life, or a decision to make. This gives a deeper meaning to Frost’s poetry so that ...
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...ravelled by.”
Whereas ‘Stopping By Woods’ represents a pause in a journey, or wanting to succumb to darkness or even death, to lay down in the “downy” snow and sleep/die, “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep/And miles to go before I sleep,” but knowing that he can’t, “He will not see me stopping here/To watch his woods fill up with snow/But I have promises to keep.” Though contrasting these are still important concerns of Frost’s, the different season shows the difference between decisions, how they are made, and what keeps people moving forward, and the significance of taking these journeys.
These poems both have many different and interesting messages for readers. Frost expertly uses many different techniques including ironic tone, rhyming stanzas, repetition and metaphors which help him communicate him main concerns about time passing, life, death and decisions.
Have you ever been faced with two important decisions? Life is full of options and when when you encounter two decisions you have to choose what path you are going to take. Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” represents two tough decisions and having to choose one and not the other. Robert Frost uses a few poetic devices, such as, metaphor, symbolism and vivid imagery to express and show the decisions we make in life. These poetic devices also help Robert Frost get his point across about the roads.
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. His poems are not what they seem to be at first glance. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.
Robert Frost uses metaphor and symbolism extensively in ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, developing deeper and more complex meanings from a superficially simple poem. Frost’s own analysis contributes greatly to our appreciation of the importance of metaphor, claiming that “metaphor [is] the whole of thinking,” inviting the reader to interpret the beautiful scene in a more profound way. However, the multitude of possible interpretations sees it being read as either carefully crafted lyric, a “suicide poem, [or] as recording a single autobiographical incident” . Judith Oster argues, therefore, that the social conditions individual to each reader tangibly alter our understanding of metaphor. Despite the simplicity of language, Frost uses conventional metaphors to explore complex ideas about life, death and nature. The uncertainty, even in the concluding stanza, that encompasses the poem only adds to the depth of possible readings.
Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26 of 1974 and died in Boston, Massachusetts on January 29 of 1963. Though he did not truly start publishing poems until age thirty-nine, Frost obtained four Pulitzer prizes in his writing career and was deemed one of the greatest twentieth century poets. His pastoral writing and skilled use of meter and rhythm has captured the attention of reader’s and critics for decades (Academic American, 345). Frost was very fond of nature and the beauty of things around him and illustrated this in many of his poems. A reviewer stated that Frost was “always occupied with the complicated task of simply being sincere” (Faggen, I). This statement describes the writer well in the sense that Frost’s works are very full of emotion. His use of the English language and the fact that he often seemed to be holding a little something back in his writing has made him one of the most celebrated American writers ever.
Frost’s sentence structure is long and complicated. Many meanings of his poems are not revealed to the reader through first glance, but only after close introspection of the poem. The true meanings contained in Frost’s poems, are usually lessons on life. Frost uses symbolism of nature and incorporates that symbolism into everyday life situations. The speaker in the poems vary, in the poem “The Pasture”, Frost seems to be directly involved in the poem, where as in the poem “While in the Rose Pogonias”, he is a detached observer, viewing and talking about the world’s beauty. Subsequently, the author transfers that beauty over to the beauty of experiences that are achieved through everyday life.
Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is about a person the speaker, who stops near the woods when it is snowing out to take a break and look around. He notices how beautiful it is to look at the snow falling in such a peaceful way out of the dark sky.
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. It might seem that the poem is about apple picking and hard work but it is actually about the nature of death.
Robert Frost’s poems are well liked because they work on so many different levels; on the surface they are stories about the beauty of nature, while deeper down they are journeys in finding ones self and more. Robert Frost is an American poet who was born in San Francisco. His poems reflect rural life and is one of America's best known poets. Through his works he uses symbolism and nature to show man in search of self.
One of Robert Frost’s most well known poems is The Road Not Taken. Frost had mentioned numerous times that it was a “tricky- very tricky” poem (Grimes). This can be examined in the structure of the poem, the symbolism, and the diction. The simple language he uses in the poem reveals the common relevance of the poem to the people. People have to go about making choices each and every day of their lives. However, sometimes we come to a cross-road in our lives that can be life changing that is what the sentence structure reveals to us (Mcintyre). He uses common words but in a way that is unclear to the reader. For example the opening line of the poem is “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Frost, Robert. “1.”). The reader is not sure what is meant by yellow woods. It may mean the onset of fall or even the coming of spring. The season could relate to the speakers stage in life. It may mean this is their youth and they have to make a decision that will plan out the rest of their life, such as I am about what college to attend. Or is it indicating he has reached his mid-life, the fall, and is now presented with opportunity to change his...
Perhaps one of the most well-known poems in modern America is a work by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. This poem consists of four stanzas that depict the story of the narrator traveling through the woods early in the morning and coming upon a fork in the path, where he milled about for a while before deciding upon one of the two paths, wishing he could take both, but knowing otherwise, seeing himself telling of this experience in the future.
Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” provide us contrasting and sometimes similar glimpses of life. “The Road Not Taken” is about taking control and living life. “Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening” entails the desire for rest, perhaps due to the speaker’s feelings of weariness from facing life’s struggles. The poet also explains the tough choices people stand before when traveling the road of life. Sometimes people regret the possibilities of the road not chosen, sometimes people feel proud about the road they have chosen.
After learning about Robert Frost personally, I can understand his inspiration and appreciate the meaning behind his poetry. Following his technique throughout his pieces, it’s clear that his origin and relationships greatly influenced his style and the themes portrayed in his poetry. From landscape, to human nature, Frost creates everlasting feelings within his audience that by the enable them to learn a hidden message. Also, his common New England lingo and conversational speech, personalize the poem. From late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, Robert Frost has shared his works with the entire world and his influence and impact on today’s society will never be forgotten.
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.
In the poem “The Road Not Taken”, author Robert Frost uses the simple image of a road to represent a person’s journey through life. A well-established poet, Frost does a proficient job of transforming a seemingly common road to one of great importance, which along the way helps one identify who they really are. This poem is one of self-discovery. Frost incorporates strong elements of poetry such as theme, symbolism, rhyme scheme, diction, imagery, and tone to help create one of his most well known pieces about the human experience.