The poem “Storm Fear” by Robert Frost describes a scene in which “the wind works against us in the dark.” Throughout the poem, the frozen landscape acts as an antagonist fighting against man. In the classic novella Ethan Frome, author Edith Wharton also personifies the landscape. The village of Starkfield, New England during the harsh winters is also an antagonist, prohibiting the characters from communicating with each other effectively. Throughout both works the environment causes Ethan and the speaker of the poem to suppress their feelings until it is too late to act.
Both authors use vivid and detailed imagery to portray a dark winter storm. Frost starts the poem by describing the chilled atmosphere. In the second line, the author denotes a harsh winter storm that “pelts with snow.” This statement, along with the line mentioned earlier, indicates that the scene is working against the characters. The word “pelt” is a key word in this sentence. Pelt may mean to attack or assault, but it can also be another word for the hide of a dead animal. This implies that the snow is so harsh that it can be classified as deadly. The title “Storm Fear” doesn’t give off a positive connotation. . Rather than mentioning the beauty of a snowflake, or describing a “winter wonderland”, the author chooses to describe the winter as if it is looking to bring an end to something (or someone). It is referred to as a “storm”, not a snowfall. “Fear” also is not positive, as it can be defined as “an unpleasant emotion”. In Ethan Frome, Wharton’s dark description of the winters in New England is prevalent throughout the work. She refers to the winter as a “sunless cold.” (pg. 8). Harmon Gow even claims that “Most of the smart ones get away [from the winte...
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...than could have gone over to Mattie when he alone with her by the fire, but instead he has her move into Zeena’s chair. Wharton indicates that he is to “indolent” and “lazy” (pg. 77) to move over to her. Neither character can make the change and overcome the influence of the storm unless they put in the effort, and do so “unaided”.
In both “Storm Fear” by Robert Frost and Edith Wharton’s great novella Ethan Frome, the landscape is personified to fight against the characters. Frost and the characters in the novella are challenged by brutal winter storms that do not allow them to communicate with each other effectively. Only when it is to late do they say what must be said and do what must be done. In the end, the landscape leaves Mattie and Ethan crippled, and Frost snowed in. If they were able to articulate, things would have been different.
Archibald Lampman’s “Winter Evening” and P.K. Page’s “Stories of Snow” both initially describe winter to be delicate and blissful, yet, as one delves deeper into the poem, it is revealed that the speakers believe winter to be harsh and forceful. Archibald Lampman’s “Winter Evening,” starts describing an evening
Ethan has dreams of leaving Starkfield and selling his plantation, however he views caring for his wife as a duty and main priority. One day, Zeena’s cousin, Mattie Silver, comes to assist the Frome’s with their daily tasks. Immediately, Mattie’s attractive and youthful energy resuscitates Ethan’s outlook on life. She brings a light to Starkfield and instantaneously steals Ethan’s heart; although, Ethan’s quiet demeanor and lack of expression causes his affection to be surreptitious. As Zeena’s health worsens, she becomes fearful and wishes to seek advice from a doctor in a town called Bettsbridge, giving Ethan and Mattie privacy for one night.
In Ethan Frome, the theme of winter is predominantly used, with its confining nature, to portray each character’s hardships. For example, the theme of winter is directly linked with Ethan Frome and the harsh conditions he has to endure to survive. To Ethan, the wintry snow in Starkfield seems elegant and appealing, but as he sees later on, the snow is unveiled as a major obstacle, preventing Ethan from achieving his dreams. Winter manifests itself as the ice, cold, and snow symbolically representing the isolation that Ethan experiences. As the narrator states “when winter shut down on Starkfield, and the village lay under a sheet of snow… must have been in Ethan Frome's young manhood,” The solitude that winter brings causes Starkfield to
...ss for yourself because in the end, one will regret it. Ethan’s morals prevent him from leaving Starkfield to pursue and achieve his dreams. He cannot baffle the traditions of his town. After Zeena tries to "foist on him the cost of a servant", forcing Ethan to let go of Mattie, he chooses to “leave with Mattie”. However, he cannot go through with the plan because he cannot bear to leave Zeena alone with her sickness. He knows she would not be able to take care of herself and cannot afford her own medicine. It is inappropriate to leave his wife in this bad condition. Therefore Ethan chooses to live an unhappy life instead of deceive his family and friends. Wharton portrays that by following society’s standards they will lose their hope and end up living in misery. Ethan chose to embark the obstacles and in the end it ruined him to a life of unhappiness and failure.
As one reads just the very few pages of the book, symbols are relevant here and there. One of the first symbols introduced is the town Starkfield. As one would mostly think Starkfield was nonetheless just a city name Wharton came up with. Meriam webster dictionary defines the prefix word “Stark” as bare, cold or empty appearance. It is now clear of how pivotal this symbol is to the story. Wharton uses this symbol to “symbolize the devastating and isolating effects of the harsh winters on the land” (Boodie). With this town we presume its an icy cold one due to the descriptions in the novel. This proceeds to the symbolism of the winter season which seems to be mostly in effect throughout the story. The winter season symbolizes feelings such as isolation and loneliness. As we all know, the winter brings on snow, ice, wind, coldness and even further in depth darkness and death. Throughout the story we see Frome hide himself in the nature of the town. With the symbolism of nature we see Ethan hiding himself through the harshness of the winter. Quoting Book Rags “ Ethan embodies the somber and bleak landscape of Starkfield itself.” With that said we can see the importance of the nature on the character’s characteristics.
The narrator, upon meeting Ethan Frome for the first time, thought "he seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface." He "had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, but had in it…the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters" (Wharton, 9).
From the opening we see that Chopin intends to use the storm to move the
Robert Frost is regarded as one of the most distinguished American poets in the twentieth century. His work usually realistically describes the rural life in New England in the early twentieth century and conveys complex social and philosophical themes. But his personal life was plagued with grief and loss, which is also reflected in his poems and the dark energy distinguishes Robert Frost’s poems, frequently conveyed in the use of lexical words like dark and its derivatives or synonyms, woods, snow, night, and so on. (Su, Y)
The great and disastrous impact of nature against man proves to play a central role as an external conflict in London's short story. The extreme cold and immense amount of snow has a powerful and dangerous hold against the man. The numbing cold proved so chilling that the man could not even spit without the spit freezing. “He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air."(604). That deadly force of nature goes on to further challenge the man, preventing him from continuing his goal. "At a place where there were no signs, where the soft unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through."(608). At this point in the story, nature overtakes the man, a conflict that directly stops him from achieving his goal, establishing nature as an external conflict providing the man with a struggle.
Frost uses different stylistic devices throughout this poem. He is very descriptive using things such as imagery and personification to express his intentions in the poem. Frost uses imagery when he describes the setting of the place. He tells his readers the boy is standing outside by describing the visible mountain ranges and sets the time of day by saying that the sun is setting. Frost gives his readers an image of the boy feeling pain by using contradicting words such as "rueful" and "laugh" and by using powerful words such as "outcry". He also describes the blood coming from the boy's hand as life that is spilling. To show how the boy is dying, Frost gives his readers an image of the boy breathing shallowly by saying that he is puffing his lips out with his breath.
“Some say the world will end in fire,/ Some say in ice./ From what I’ve tasted of desire/ I hold with those who favor fire./ But if it had to perish twice,/ I think I know enough of hate/ To say that for destruction ice/ Is also great/ And would suffice.” This poem by Robert Frost is an excellent example of how even though people tend to think that Frost’s poems are just fun easy to read poems, a lot of them actually have dark themes to them. The poem “Fire and Ice” quoted above is a poem all about death and his prefered way to die/ destroy the world. So, although 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.
Frost is far more than the simple agrarian writer some claim him to be. He is deceptively simple at first glance, writing poetry that is easy to understand on an immediate, superficial level. Closer examination of his texts, however, reveal his thoughts on deeply troubling psychological states of living in a modern world. As bombs exploded and bodies piled up in the World Wars, people were forced to consider not only death, but the aspects of human nature that could allow such atrocities to occur. By using natural themes and images to present modernist concerns, Frost creates poetry that both soothes his readers and asks them to consider the true nature of the world and themselves.
Although this poem also is connected with nature, the theme is more universal in that it could be related to Armageddon, or the end of the world. Even though this theme may seem simple, it is really complex because we do not know how Frost could possibly relate to the events leading to the end of the world. It is an "uncertain" and sometimes controversial topic, and even if everyone was certain it was coming, we do not know exactly how it will occur and when. Therefore, how did Frost envision this event? Is he portraying it in a religious context, a naturalistic one, or both? The last line (14) speaks of God putting out the light, which brings out a religious reference, but the bulk of the poem deals with nature entirely. Physical images of water, clouds, continents, and cliffs present a much more complex setting than the simple setting in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" or the yellow wood in "The Road Not Taken."
Nature is an important theme in every frost poem. Nature usually symbolizes age or other things throughout Frost’s poems. In lines 5-10 it says, “Often you must have seen them loaded with ice a sunny winter morning after a rain. They click upon themselves as the breeze rises, and turn many-colored as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells.” This demonstrates how nature can sometimes symbolize something. Also in lines 29-33 it says, “ By riding them down over and over again until he took the stiffness out of them, and not one but hung limp, not one was left for him to conquer. He learned all there was to learn about not launching too soon.” In lines 44-48 it says, And life is too much like a pathless wood where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it, and one eye is weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it open. I’d like to get away from earth for a while.”
Robert Frost once said, “Don 't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.” This quote can be seen as someone broken with such high defenses being loved by another who doesn’t understand the pain and tries to destroy all those defenses. This is exactly the kind of perception that Frost had, everything is dangerous, fear and cautiousness are the supposed answer. While Frost’s work is full of fear it does relate to contemporary people. Contemporary souls have much of the same problems that Frost’s society had to endure such as fear of the unknown or lost. While his society can be seen as rural, and fearful of change, which is a contrast to the contemporary society so ever-present, it is also similar do to his view that the world